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On the Fall of the PU
I followed what Biden and Ryan had to say about Social Security in their debate. My take on their words:
Ryan said four times that his plan was to restructure Social Security. He said his plan would not involve a sacrifice for anyone who is now 55 or older. Ryan has created a new “Red Line”. If you’re 54 or younger, you are below the red line; bend over. If you are above Ryan’s artificial red line, you get a free ride.
This is an extremely unfair plan. I can’t imagine how it could be implemented without ripping the country apart.
Ryan was referring to a version of the Simpson-Bowles plan for Social Security. A combination of increased taxes, coupled with increased retirement age and lower monthly benefits. There would be delay in implementing these changes, so that those who are now near retirement age would not be hurt.
I give Ryan a B+ for honesty. America’s politicians have to fess up to the fact that Social Security (SS) must make significant changes to remain solvent. Higher taxes and lower benefits are necessary if SS is to last another twenty-years. There is no way around that fact. Any politician, who says otherwise, is just lying.
But I give Ryan a D- for fairness. The idea that everyone today aged 54 or younger gets screwed, while those a few days older get off Scott-free is insane to me.
America’s problem is the Baby Boomers. Every day there are 10,000 new beneficiaries who are hitting up SS for a monthly check. At that rate, over 40 million Boomers will be getting their full monthly checks by the time Ryan’s “Red Line” comes into effect. After the first SS check is written, the future payouts can’t be reduced. So the Ryan plan creates a carve-out that protects a huge chunk of the Boomers. It does it at the expense of everyone who is today under 55.
That’s the plan? Protect the age group that is causing the problem? At the expense of the next few generations? None of the 40 odd million Boomers will suffer at all? None of them? Where’s the fairness in that plan?
What Ryan promised for SS is just a political lie. The fact is that all of the folks who are today 55+ probably liked what they heard Ryan saying. And that is a very big block of voters.
The Boomers are the problem. They have to be part of the solution. Any plan that gives the Boomer age cohort a free ride at the expense of the rest of the population is a recipe for disaster. The risk is Age Warfare.
++
Everyone says that Biden is the “smart” debater. Maybe so. His comments on SS were carefully crafted. But if you look through his words, he was just playing politics.
Joe went straight to a liberal hot spot on SS. He flat out promised that an Obama/Biden ticket would never, ever privatize SS. This was a very smart move on Joe’s part. It plays to one of the great fears that the lovers of SS have; that one-day, the Republicans will let the evil guys on Wall Street get their hands on the SS Trust Fund.
Ryan rebutted that privatization should be considered for younger workers, but Biden blew him away with one of his now famous chuckles. Biden knew that he had scored points, as he knew that even the mention of the word “privatization” would get a few hundred thousand folks to the voting booth.
On this exchange I would give Biden a B+ and Ryan a D-. Ryan is wrong on privatization, he should have known better.
Ten years ago SS was running $100+Bn annual cash surpluses. If there ever was a time to consider a partial privatization, that was it. A portion of the surpluses could have been allocated to other investments back then. But not any longer.
SS is running annual deficits now. They are in the -$50Bn range for 2012, but the red ink will grow rapidly north of $100Bn in just a few years. If any portion of SS’s current cash flow were diverted to other investments, it would mean that there would be a larger drain on the Trust Fund surplus. The fact is, privatization is no longer a policy option. So Ryan was selling sound bites of a policy that has no chance of seeing the light of day.
Outside of the attack on the privatization of SS, Biden said nothing about SS that was worth noting. As a debate move, this was brilliant. If you say nothing, have no position and avoid critical issues, you win debates.
Here’s the facts Joe Boy:
Before 2016 the SS Disability Fund will run dry. They next administration has to confront this reality. A fix is required in less than 36 months. There is a gun to your head for action Joe. You have two choices. Raise taxes or cut DI benefits. Which one is it? You can’t hide under a rock for another four years, so what are you going to do?
The retirement side of SS will run off the cliff in 20 years according to the CBO. But that estimate is off the mark. It is not possible to run the SS Trust Fund to zero; a minimum of one-year’s worth benefits has to be retained as a minimum reserve. Over the next decade there will be at least one recession, when that happens the SS death spiral will be advanced by five or so years (as it was from the 08 blowout). The reality is that the SS drop dead date is closer to ten-years away from today. You can pretend this does not exist, but that makes you a liar.
Ryan has a bad plan, Biden has no plan at all. As it turns out, Ryan’s plan of “55 and under get clobbered” is about right. That is exactly the way this is going to play out. Either there is legislation that screws everyone 55 or under, “the Ryan Plan”, or there is the Biden “Do Nothing Plan”, and in about ten-years SS falls off a cliff. Either way, the same folks get screwed.
++
I think America needs a new political party. I would call it the Purple Unders Party (PUP). Purple, because it is the color when Blue and Red are mixed equally. Unders, for that group of people who are 55 and under.
The funny thing is that the PUs are out there. They will be voting for either a Red or a Blue. One fringe or the other will win, the PUs will all lose. Those PUs make up most of the population, and well more than half of the votes.
What a stupid system.
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The claims that we "we invested in" and "were made to invest in" a fraudulent scheme and are owed nothing are not only wrong, but self-contradictory. When someone invests in a fraud, they are owed something, they are owed their money back. Of course they don't get it as a rule, but they are owed it back. When someone is forced to invest in a fraud, they have an even greater claim to the return of their investment, but the outcome is likely to be the same. Still, to blame those who were forced to something as if they chose to do it is also wrong.
Unfortunately most of your "investment" has been poorly managed the the government. Only by creating accounting loopholes for themselves is the government able to still value your "investments" at par (100%).
Longer term the only solution is you will get a substantial part of your "investment" paid back with additionally printed dollars, another loophole for the government. When, where and how this shows up in inflation is everyone's guess. But that inflation will happen with this approach is cast in stone.
Secondly your math is severely flawed. 1% annual interest compounded over 40 years is (1.01)^40 = 1.48886, so you only won an additional ~50% through compounding interest. Even if your income was the same every year (averaging out usually raises your early income and lowers your latter which falsifies the compounding interest), and the FICA taxes had been the same for the last 40 years (they were a lot lower 20 years ago), and even if all of those 15% went into SS (they didn't), then you would have 40 * 12 * $375 = $180,000, and even if all the money magically accrued interest for the whole 40 years, you would now have a "personal investment" of about $270,000.
Plan accordingly.
"Social Security is NOT and entitlelment program." No, it's a LIE.
You have no "account", no "investment", no "contributions", NOTHING. CONgress can reduce or eliminate your SS check anytime it wants to - as I found for that other Krasting thread, look up the "Flemming vs. Nestor" case that the Supreme Court ruled on back in the 1960s. Why they didn't simultaneously rule that SS was unConstitutional as a "taking" in violation of the Fifth Amendment is beyond me, but there it is.
[No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.]
But the Supremes ruled that SS was a tax, only a tax, and therefore within the power of Congress to levy such a tax and use the proceeds for ordinary purposes; your "contributions" went to build bridges, roads and dams; pay military pensions; pay off Solyndra, Lightsquared, and First Solar; bail out AIG; rescue the GM union pension funds; and whatever other acts, good, bad, corrupt or indifferent, that Congress has voted for.
Sorry, but don't be mad at me; I didn't tell you that you had some kind of entitlement coming. The US government did that, lying between their teeth every breath they took. It's terrible, horrible, deception and fraud of the first order; but there it is. There's nothing in your account because there are no accounts, no reserves, no set-aside or investments; as John Williams of Shadowstats says, "The SS Trust fund is neither trustworthy, nor funded."
But it's still only part of the larger fraud; if you taxed everyone at 100% of income, we still would not close the gap between what we owe and what we have. Given that reality, how long do you think SS can survive, in any form? How long do you expect those checks to continue, or if continued, to buy as much as a gallon of milk and a loaf of bread?
I wish I had a better answer for you, but there isn't one. Either you understand mathematics, or you wish for miracles. Your choice.
You're right. Means-testing will be required to make the numbers work when the economy craters over the next several years. This will amount to a "success tax" that will be tremendously popular with the younger workers and those dependent on SS for basic subsistence. Until the SHTF though, no solution such as the very rational alternative is possible because it is not "fair". I've had thirty five years to get used to the idea (believe me, I don't like it) since I never included a SS benefit in my financial planning for retirement; others will get used to it in a shorter time-frame of necessity.
Bruce, I read your stuff. But seriously, WTF is up with "fair"? It sounds, well, pathetic.
Bruce
I've had an idea for awhile.
1) We force all living Presidents to go to Camp David for a Deficit Summit (Since they are the con-artists ultimately responsible for 4 decades of unpaid-for bullshit)
2) They get 2 weeks of food and water and after that they are not allowed any more. Nor are they allowed to leave until their task is complete.
3) They have to come up with a legitimate plan to cut $1 trillion in annual govt. spending over a 4 year period. In other words, a 4 year plan to a balanced budget.
4) When the plan is decided upon, they then have to present it to the American people and also publicly apologize for overpromising, over-warring, and overspending for 4 decades.
Some shit along those lines.
And then we get to take turns berating them in public and calling them assholes in a live pay per view event.
Debt Party USA - $17 Trillion Now In Sight
Debt Jubilee one way or the other. Via collapse or "war" or inflation, various sorts of default and haircuts, theft(think of the Obummer admin's handling of the UAW benefits industry's problems) probably some combination.
Both Bruce and Dr.Krugman are well aware that thereis very little if any chance of legitimately funding the debt, Medicare, Medicaid and Soc Sec. In 10 years time, these three line items will overwhelm the federal budget. Even today our government borrows 42 cents out of each dollar it spends. There is only one way this can possibly play out-- monetization.
And fudging the inflation indexing of benefits, don't forget that. The benefits are indexed to "inflation" but the governements defines what this is to its favor, such as in the definition of CPI which excludes things irrelevant from day to day living, such as food and fuel.
Bruce,
I have been following your work since a colleague told me about Zero Hedge over one year ago. I appreciate your work and the thought you put into it. I agree, privatizing the SSTF at this point would not work. Can we really lower benefits though? Obviously not when retirees rely on SS for 40% of their income.
Taxes are very low in context of the last century and we know they will rise - they have to if we are to fund our expenditures. I don't want to get too far off track, but this is why it is so important to have the economy find recovery - we will need to source the funds down the road.
Anyway, taxes will rise to fund the SSTF. The SSTF has become a staple of the American way of life and it will need to stay in place if the American Dream continues.
Take care,
Paul
"if we are to fund our expeditures."
Are you aware of the nubmers in relation to the funded and unfunded liabilities? The number of taxpayers available to fulfil you assumption don't exist. The burden of paying of the debt per taxpayer is $1,056,741 http://www.usdebtclock.org as I type. Can you tell me how we "CHANGE" in order to bump wages to cover that?
I really, really want to believe that the "real" PK would contribute a comment to this article.
But this does not ring "true" to me. It's too nice.
I beat on PK every chance I get. I regularly comment on his blog, and say things I'm surprised get through his sensors. I must have 50 articles where I have spoken poorly of him. I've never met the guy, so it's nothing personal. But, if you read me, you know I can stray onto the "rude" side of criticism.
So I'm surprised when this comes up and it reads like we are pals.
I could be wrong (again) and this is PK. If that is the case, then, Paul, you take care too.
Bruce
Bruce
Dude posting under Krugman's name is trying for a 'Million Dollar Bonus' comment affect. It isn't paul. The way the tylers righteously and correctly loathe the keynesians, krug and his five apartment cats wouldn't show their salt-n-pepper clooney-esque visages 'round these parts.
Krugman thinks $5 trillion in additional debt is worth getting his side to hold the 2012 elections. It's a huge part of why we should all hate keynesian economists. Accoring to their egregiously twisted worldview, keeping the good guys (DEMS) in power (thru trillions in deficit spending over 4 years) is infinitely more important than any lasting effect that debt load will have on our children and grandchildren.
It's generational rape, bitchez, and krugs is leading the gangbang of our kids. Fuck him.
I really, truly, honestly, actually, without question, non-dubiously hate that motherfucker.
DB
Bruce you called yourself a Commie in another post said your were a Democrat so I thought your right you are. First of all Social Security was enacted before the boomers were even born. Second of all you said in another post that there should be means testing and people above a certain threshold shouldn't get back any of the money they were forced to pay in. Now your harping about how the younger generation would get screwed because the fund is owed Trillions. America's problem is not the Boomer's it's a holes like you who think they are entitled to say who gets what and the politicians who borrowed from the fund.
Social Security can't tax and it can't deficit spend by law so it's disengenious to say the boomers will get the full amount they will in fact only get the full amount until the fund no longer has the money. Baby Boomer's paid in more then previous generations because of President Reagan's attempts to shore up the Fund yet they will be the first generation in history that will in fact get less then they paid in. That's NOT a free ride the Boomer's paid for it themself's so who are you to say it's an entitlement or who should get what? If anyone is making this into an Age Warfare issue it's people like you but I'm not surprised you said you were a Democrat/Commie so doing that is right out of the Alinsky playbook.
Today’s Retirees First to Pay More Into Social Security Than They’ll Get BackAccording to a 2011 study by the Urban Institute, a married couple retiring last year after both spouses had worked throughout their lifetimes wound up paying about $598,000 in Social Security taxes. If the man lives to 82 and the woman to 85, they can expect to collect about $556,000 in benefits.
"As the Pulitzer Prize-winning former New York Times economics reporter David Cay Johnston has repeatedly explained, this is the primary demonstrable myth being used by the DC class (like you Bruce) – which largely does not need entitlements – to deceive ordinary Americans into believing that they must "sacrifice" the pittances on which they are now living"
Let me be clear I believe Social Security was unconstitutional to begin with but it was enacted anyway having said that the program is entirely self funded unlike obamacare which will require large amounts of government money and will raise your income taxes.
As far as Joe the JackAss Biden going straight to a liberal hot spot the liberals are apparently to ignorant to look into his actions he Proposed a Social Security Freeze in 1984
Read the full speech here.
"I think America needs a new political party. I would call it the Maroon Unders Party (MUP)"
Why not just resurrect the Know Nothing Party? I can think of no time in America's history, including the era of the Know Nothings, that the average American had a less of clue what was really going on in government.
This article is complete nonense. You can argue about "solutions" but the bottom line is we are out of money. This benefit, like all others, will cease.
It's just math.
This is not a 'benefit'. It is a return on capital that has been invested over a working life.
Those with the most among us may have to pay higher taxes to make up for the money raided from the SS trust fund. So be it. That is who benefitted most from the plunder.
Dude: FICA is just a tax. SCOTUS ruled 40 years ago. So sorry. SS payments are just an arbitrary figure derived from an arbitrary formula dreamed up by Congress / bureaucrats. That arbitrary number can be $0.00. We're still running on the Greenspan iteration of that formula. That will change soon. You really need to do some reading and educate yourself.
Higher taxes? Probably. Never let a crisis go to waste. But where is your sense of shared sacrifice?/sarc/ When this monster gets slashed and burned; *everyone* better take a hit. Screw Ryan's fake plan. I'm nearly 50. So what - I get to have my taxes jacked right through my highest earning years while I'm trying to put kids through college; while the people 10 years ahead of me who screwed up just about everything about this country get it all?
I won't vote for someone who has just told me that they're going to do me like I'm Khaddafi. Both Biden and Ryan just said that is what is going to happen. That doesn't leave a lot of viable choices.
Current and near future retirees actually need to take the biggest brunt of the hit - because that's where the dollars are right now *today*; and *today* is when those dollars are needed. If today's retirees go from $1,900/mo to $1,400/mo, then $900 and $450 over the course of the next 5 - 10 years in a series of graduated actual cuts to cash outlays; then I won't mind I suppose when the next cut is to $0.00 for me.
Dude are you a troll or something? This is the third crazy post.
Are you being funny and I am too stupid to get it?
A 'return on capital' from a government program??
AH HA HA HA!
Dude, share the opium pipe!
Entitlements are affordable if military spending is cut back to equal the amount spent by the second largest military in the world. Tax revenue isn't paying for either now. It's paid by printing and debasing the dollar, and thereby, since the USD is the world's reserve currency, debasing the rest of the world's currencies also. The savings of the average European and Asian go to pay for this theft as well as that of the Americans.
Ryan didn't say where he and his bud were going to get enough tax revenue to pay for the military and what remaining entitlements there would be for he and his Wall St. pals.
Biden having a plan is a very scary thought.
The U.S. will not be bankrupt as long as it can print to pay for its debts. America's debts are in US dollars and Bernanke can create an unlimited amount of those out of thin air.
Let's see here, Europe doesn't spend much on the military, and they are going broke from entitlements, sloth, stasis and a government-caused birth dearth. The same is happening here to a lesser degree, so your suggestion to merely slow down the descent is to stop policing the world's sea lanes and standing ready to and occasionally stomping down on dictatorships running rampant. Yeah, that's the ticket. The abrupt end of the Pax Americana and resulting plunge in trade will be so great for the economy, and tax receipts will just skyrocket on top of all that overflowing bursting forth of plentitude.
On second thought, allowing the world to blow up in our faces is how FDR turned around the statist stasis that his control-freak policies inflicted, so maybe you are right. Let some ginormous overseas tragedy and resulting clear and present existential threat rally the american people once again into a mode of forced, yet patriotic self-sacrifice, fixed prices and wages and rationing etc, a Big War which will hopefully once again destroy the productive capacity of the rest of the world, after which being Last Industrial Nation Standing a kind of 50's and 60's length economic easy times can re-occur.
Sounds like a good plan, except the "unlimited, cheap oil" part is now gone. Which changes pretty much everything.
"...Third option: limit the beneficiaries to the people for whom the program was originally designed. No more "disabled" drug addicts, 18 year old college students, etc."
Excellent idea.. plus git rid of all the people that are on SS who didn't pay anything into it. Many of us started paying in our early teens with first real jobs... I have an ex wife who I was married to for 12 years... a now retired public school teacher...who got a golden handshake when she was 60 years old. I never saw any of that, but she immediately filed for credit on my SS when she hit 65. Now she gets the same benefits I get and Medicare benefits... all on top of the very large government pension she got from 30 years of teaching. The SS finances her travel / vacation and golf expenses...
Hundreds of thousands of immigrants to the United States who declare themselves to be over 65 can immediately collect Social Security. What a deal.
If she was teaching while you were married, you got fucked over either by her attorney or your attorney. Or you were way too nice to her.
Bruce,
The plan is and has been to nationalize all privately held 401K, IRAs, and public pensions (state publice employees). That provides about $20 trillion to Social Security. And it gets the states' off the hook for all their unfunded liabilities.
Which would mean the governement directly owns the means of production, or the (formerly) publically quoted part anyway. Sound familiar?
They are already floating out there the idea in Kentucky to take a part of 401Ks and IRAs to fund the $30 to $40 Billion shorfall in the pension fund for teachers, cops, firemen and politicos.
If you have any "paper" retirement "tax deferred" accounts, I suggest taking the hit and cashing them out now. For sure, don't put another nickel in. You would be better off buying lottery tickets.
Solid advice Moe but from the tone of some of these posters I doubt any of them will act on it.
The vast majority of Americans are still deep asleep on financial issues and the governments inabililty to meet its future obligations.
The math is 100% certain. It's Game Over bitchez...
Or, how about nationalizing all personal fortunes in excess of $1 Billion?
What about nationalizing the banks?
Or, we could join the rest of the first world countries and provide universal health coverage. Cutting the cost of health care from 17% of our GDP down to 10% would be huge, and just about in line with what all other countries pay. It would also have the side benefit of making all our exports more competitive. As it stands now, our private industry is shelling out about $10K/yr per employee in increased cost of production & much higher in some industries.
We need some politicians with balls and a desire to help this country, instead of the pandering jokes we keep having offered up to chose from.
"What about nationalizing the banks?"
Fuck that. How about pulling their gilded lips off the government teat ?
i've heard that plan before akrunner. but how do they pull it off? if they nationalize everything u say then it1s instant chaos.
Well, once there is only one owner of every publically traded asset, the government, there isn't a market anymore, and incentives to perform well are destroyed, as in the the USSR. They pretended to pay the workers and the workers pretended to work. Companies hoarded inventories rather than try to minimized them. A giant civilisational clusterf...
As with most things truely awful, it could be done in steps - the first of which would be to require a certain %, let's say 20 to begin with, of all funds held in any government regulated retirement fund be invested solely in US debt instruments. After all, they are completely safe and guarantee a return. And besides, this will only affect "the rich". They're the only ones who can afford to have these funds, right? That they have these funds is certainly not fair to the "rest" of us. Just gradually increase the %, just to keep up with inflation, you know, until the whole thing is covered. What could be safer? And it has the extra advantage of making your personal retirement funds available to morons like Joe Biden to do good with.
Conflate that with a similar requirement for all bank deposits and, voila, you are truely and totally fucked. All in the name of the common good. Easy, peasy.
Call it the Secure Retirement Act. It is the right thing to do, protect our nation b/c we owe it to ourselves and provide a "secure" return for private retirement accounts. Look for articles pointing out poor returns on Private Retirement Accounts and studies showing that fixed income yields would have provided exponentially higher returns.
I ran a program once about 3 years ago where you could imput you and your employer contributions into a spreadsheet ...I did mine starting 1970 to present .you could put in your own mix I used 50/50 equity /bonds ...it came out 2.2 million for the time worked ( I reduced my equity 5% every year the last 10 years ) .....I could have certainly taken more risk to reap more reward ...I also wish I had this option in 1970
The age group that is causing the problem? Just give me back the total contributions over the past 1/2 century with a 3% or 4% yield or whatever... oh wait, CONgress spent it?
Amen. There is only one group responsible for the problem, and they're still fucking with it non-stop.
Who has been voting that group in for the past few decades?
"I give Ryan a B+ for honesty.
But I give Ryan a D- for fairness.
On this exchange I would give Biden a B+ and Ryan a D-."
Not sure how anyone rates the "plan" by any politician. They simply spew the crap they and their politcal polsters/strategists think will gain the most votes. One positive aspect of the video capability of cell phones is that the candidates/current politicians can be videod giving completly contradictory statements from one town to the next. I attended a small fund raiser and the politician's political strategist confided this video capability was the worst thing to happen to campaigning in the last 10 years - his opinion.
The only way to get a politician to do something for you is to pay them enough money. Totally by chance they may have a stray thought on an issue that matches yours.
I've lived my whole life as somebody's whipping boy; kinda getting tired of being so over living in a human condition for which I have/had no control. I'm white... so I am automatically a racists; especially if I question the principle of reverse racisim embedded in affirmative action. I'm male so I'm automatically a misogynist or potential pervert... especially when fighting for the custody of my daughter in a court of law (judge told me so). I was born in the mid-1940s a "boomer"... so I am now being blamed for suggesting a wish to collect on a ponzi scheme. Oops! Should have known it was a ponzi scheme? I was "given" a SS card and number at age 8 with my first "job" and sure enough SS deductions were taken. My great depression era parents said it was for my "retirement". Forgive me if I didn't figure out it was a ponzi until mid-way through high school. Had I known I guess I would have opted out, ya right.
Krasting your posts usually have something worthwhile to say; but blaming boomers for the SS debacle is beneath your intelligence. "Boomers" are not the problem; the fucking SS ponzi is! Even though I've paid into SS, I don't expect, and haven't / won't collect a thing from USSA SS; so fuck off.
Ah, you do realize that I'm a Boomer too?
You can't blame a boomer for being born, but you can blame the boomers for creating the mess were in. I take my share of the responsibility, you should too.
Let's face it, the Boomers screwed up, big time.
bk
Not sure how to take this , BK (if it was directed at me [the universe DOES revolve around me, right?] ).
I can't claim benefit or blame from collective action, because the Boomers (class of 1958) never have acted collectively (or I wasn't hip enough to be part of the crowd).
What I was getting at was individual responsibility, not collective guilt; that seems to be an Alinsky tactic (try to make people feel guilty so they can be manipulated by their guilt; even if they never owned slaves, nor their family ever owned slaves, all white southerners are guilty of racism / racial oppression). There were plenty of poor white trash back during the Confederate days (my folks on one side were that, never owned enough land to make slaves useful, so never owned any slaves).
IF the Boomers exist as a collective (or group or society) then MY personal family of Boomers contains:
(1) One male with a degree in microbiology who wound up as a computer librarian;
(2) One male with no degree at all (though he attended college four years, he quit before graduation) who has made his living as a carpenter, at times owning / running his own shop;
(3) One male with one degree in music, another in electrical engineering, now works as an electrical engineer;
(4) One female with one degree in mechanical engineering, another in computer science, works free-lance in computer software;
and me, one male with two degrees in chemical engineering, twenty years in varied industries, finishing up a Ph.D. (hopefully, soon, please God) and looking for work when I graduate.
None has held public office, some won't vote (I always have), only two have children, ten years between youngest and oldest, two nominal Repubs, three agnostics on politics, no drinking / drugs / substance abuse problems that I ever heard of, only one divorce, two never married (but both thoroughly shacked-up, in multi-decade associations). Compared with people my age who I have worked with, we're depressingly normal.
But NONE OF US worked in policy / government / think tanks or such; how are we, as a group, responsible for these messes?
Please elaborate, I don't understand how I am responsible for creating SS, the Great Society, the FED, inflation, the MIC, the enviro-crazy movement, massive pollution, or anything similar. I voted for Reagan, yes, and the elder Bush (before I found out what a louse he was), but not for Clinton, Obama, Johnson, FDR, Nixon, Ford, or the younger Bush. Do I deserve some share of culpability for things that were created before I was even born, and never consulted about?
If the Boomers were guilty of anything, it was being too busy living, making a living and earning money to figure out they were being screwed by unscrupulous representation. I'm thinking of folks like Byrd of WV, Kennedy of MA, Schumer of NY, Conyers of MI, and so forth. Folks who spent taxes like water and never saw a pork-barrel they didn't like. Maybe we're guilty of that.
But I cannot follow the logic of blaming a generation for failure when a generation is not a unified group, independent of other generations, and totally in charge. Fill me in.
+1 follow-up.
Boomers are the generation that have lived the social experiments you so well outlined. It appears that we will take the blame for our participation in those illconceived programs.
However, I do have to admit that some of the "boomer" programs have left a positive societal influence; the GI bill comes to mind.
What's sad is that generational defensiveness kicks in and blinds many boomers to the underlying facts. Just one more battle line perceived among us.
I'm a decade behind you, but heard the same bullshit all my life. I'm white, so I'm a racist; I'm male, so I'm an oppressor of all females, especially the ones I've at least met, but all of them even if I haven't even met them. I'm a child of privilege, since I'm not on welfare and food stamps; too stupid to see how my policies and practices have ruined the world, even though I've never held public office or worked in government.
SCREW THIS! I paid taxes for twenty years on my private-sector salaries, never will see a dime from SS or disability (as long as I stay healthy); I have helped build manufacturing facilities in the US in half a dozen places, gotten two degrees in engineering, and gone back to school at 43 instead of sitting home collecting transfer payments. If Congress understood systems and sustainability they would totally redesign SS (if not simply turn it off over a few decades). Government was never designed to handle these loads, the people who thought it could were undercut by medical science and improved nutrition, and no one can admit failure EVEN NOW, as the last coals fade to ashes and the funds needed to pay benefits run down to pennies and vapor.
QUIT LYING, stop trying to lift the sky, and quit slandering everyone based on the (white) color of their skin, (male) anatomy, and socioeconomic condition. The real hard times are still a-comin', and those who think they can talk their way to prosperity are blowing smoke up everyone's butt.
This article makes a lot of sense. You can have my social security. I know it's never going to get paid to me. Just stop making me pay into this shit.