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Guest Post: The Brewing Generational Conflict
Submitted by Charles Hugh-Smith of OfTwoMinds blog,
Financial promises made under different conditions and assumptions are null and void, period.
Essayist Eric A. touched on a key theme of the next decade in his two-part series A Brief History of Cycles and Time, Part 1 and Part 2: the political, social and financial dominance of the Baby Boom generation, and the eventual erosion of that dominance.
The promises made to the 76 million baby Boomers cannot be met. It's really very simple: promises made when the economy was growing by 4% a year and the next generation was roughly double the size of the generation entering retirement cannot be fulfilled in an economy growing 1.5% a year (and only growing at all as the result of massive expansions of public and private debt) in which the generation after the cohort entering retirement is significantly smaller.
Just look at this chart: demographics is destiny, and the so-called Silent Generation (roughly those born 1925 - 1942) currently drawing Social Security and Medicare benefits is somewhere between half and 2/3 the size of the Baby Boom.
Meanwhile, Generation X that follows the Baby Boom is almost half the size of the enormous cohort currently entering retirement. Sorry folks, the numbers don't add up, no matter how you finesse them: a smaller working population in a low-to-zero growth economy burdened with fast-rising debt cannot fund the pay-as-you-go retirement of 76 million citizens, fully 25% of the entire U.S. population.
(Recall that Social Security, Medicare and all other entitlements are pay-as-you-go. There is no trust fund; the current benefits are paid in full by taxes paid by current workers/taxpayers or by Federal borrowing via the sale of Treasury bonds.)
(The numbers and dates of generations are inexact; the Silent Generation, for example, is assumed to have missed serving in World War II but my father was born in 1926, joined the U.S. Navy in 1944 and was on a LST preparing for the invasion of Japan in early 1945, so this is not true of all Silents. The Baby Boom is typically defined as those born between 1946 and 1964, but many of those born in 1959-64 do not feel they belong to the "earlier" Baby Boom, and so some people divide the Baby Boom into two cohorts, or start Generation X in 1961. The lack of precision does not change the basic demographics.)
Everyone takes the present trend, takes out a ruler and pencil and projects it into the future, as if current trends will continue in a straight line. But they never do; the world is dynamic and trends change and reverse.
I have been surprised by the deep emotions that arise out of our cultural Id when generational characterizations and conflicts are openly discussed. Perhaps this is why these issues and feelings are rarely aired in the mainstream media.
In the free-form blogosphere, these officially inconvenient (i.e. suppressed) emotions are expressed, and these few honest expressions garner large audiences and a great many highly charged comments.
My position on the entitlements promised to the Baby Boomers has been clear since 2005 (Boomers, Prepare to Fall on Your Swords June 2005): demographics, the changing job market and the destructive consequence of financializing the U.S. economy render the entitlements promised (Social Security and Medicare) unpayable.
The current 115 million full-time workers cannot sustainably support the 110 million people currently drawing Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid--and the number of retirees entering these entitlement program will rise by millions in the decade ahead.
This worker-beneficiary ratio (already 1-to-1) will only become more unsustainable as Baby Boomers retire and the forces of The End of Work erode full-time jobs The End of (Paying) Work (January 21, 2009).
The Promises That Cannot Be Kept (July 6, 2011)
That Which is Unsustainable Will Go Away: Medicare (May 16, 2012)
The generation in power has the biggest stake in retaining the status quo. Anything that threatens the status quo threatens their power and all that has been promised to them by the status quo.
As a result, any real reform that reduces entitlements to a sustainable level is politically dead on arrival (DOA). Reform is thus as impossible as paying the promised entitlements.
Though he is often presented as belonging to a new generation, President Obama (born 1961) is a Baby Boomer in age, outlook and politics, accepting the fantasy that 25% of the nation can draw hefty, open-ended benefits from Medicare indefinitely.
The solution is to work backwards from what the current generation of workers can afford to pay, not to work forwards from promises made when things were different. The pool of money that can be skimmed from the productive economy via taxes to pay for national defense, the care of veterans, education, welfare in all its forms, corporate and individual, all the myriad departments of government and Social Security pensions and Medicare is not unlimited. Difficult choices will have to be made, and what was promised decades ago is not the key consideration: what is foremost is the sustainability of the nation as an ongoing concern, which means focusing on the generations coming of age and those shouldering the tax burden going forward.
It is a truism of the entitlement mindset that the greater the entitlements promised and offered, the greater the resentments and self-absorption of the beneficiaries. I have often written about the state of permanent adolescence the Savior State/entitlement mindset engenders:
Our Many Layers of Entitlement (September 29, 2011)
The State, Dependency, Addiction and Reciprocity (September 28, 2010)
Opting Out and the Culture of Entitlement (March 29, 2010)
Entitlements, Taxes, Inequality and Three-Way Class Warfare (September 20, 2010)
Tyranny of the Majority, Corporate Welfare and Complicity (April 9, 2010)
Entitlements and the Federal Deficit (February 5, 2011)
We desperately need an adult discussion focused on reality rather than resentment. The solution will require dismantling open-ended, everyone-deserves-everything Medicare, which will bankrupt the nation itself. The solution is currently "impossible": The "Impossible" Healthcare Solution: Go Back to Cash (July 29, 2009)
As for pay-as-you-go Social Security, it will have to be means-tested: those drawing thousands of dollars a month in other pensions will have to let go of "what wuz promised" so other Boomers who have only Social Security can receive their full benefit. What exactly is so difficult about that?
I am a Baby Boomer, born 1953, and I hope our generation musters the courage to face reality and the need for re-assessment and adjustment and yes, the word that is tossed around in endless lip-service but avoided in the real world, sacrifice. Anything less will be a generational failure of monumental proportions.
I refuse to burden our children and grandchildren with mountains of debt so I can get the full measure of "what I wuz promised." Financial promises made under different conditions and assumptions are null and void, period. Reality trumps "what wuz promised" every time.
What nobody dares say is that if the 76 million Boomers press their claims to the point the nation is bankrupted, then the next generations (X and Y) will have to wrest political power from the retirees, not for their own sake but for the sake of the nation and for the generations behind them.
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No, we will just bring the nation to its knees with revolution and civil war; most of you will die of starvation and disease when the supply lines break and your food and meds go away, or from a bullet when those of us who are younger and more ruthless take what we need from you in order to feed our starving families.
That's fine...there will be casualties on both sides...and unlike you I only have about 30 years left to go, so again, bring it on! In the meantime, you can "ruthlessly" sit around and not contribute anything to the social security fund that you apparently so desperately crave...
charles, what an absolutely adorable thing to say.
after all that's happened, you still have faith in this idea of a "nation" that should be saved, and could possibly end in something other than complete and total collapse and bankrupcy.
EXACTLY! As though this pigsty of a country somehow DESERVES to be saved! Too funny!
robots, boomers, Les Miseables. Millions of jobs are lost each year to automation/robots and its accelerating. So stay in school as long as possible, run up as much debt as possible, live your dream today for there is no tomorrow for your generation. Same is true for retirees. robots win. Les Miserables
Most of the job loss in the US has been offshoring. Which is a human choice. The choice can be made the other way.
Robots are no threat to an economy organized around the idea of maximizing per capital wealth. Unfortunately, our economy is organized on the idea of maximizing the concentration of wealth among the privileged elite.
If you make SS farce a means tested system, then just call it what it is "welfare".
We all pay in to it with the promise that we will get back what we *paid* in. Entitlement my @$$. This is the biggest con ever. Mr Govt says "You're goning to need some money when you retire, let us take some from you and give it back you later." What?? Why would one not just dig a hole and put the savings in friggin mayonaise jar and bury it? I suppose in case you lost it in a canoeing accident, and had nothing to retire on... well then we can talk, but otherwise, be responsible for yourself, and then for your family, and then for others if you have anything left.
Let me guess the SS and Medicare means test you will be given is "Did you support a 'Tea Party or Patriot Organization?'", if so, then you are disqualified, thanks for your inquiry. That seems quite fair to me. /sarc.
Means testing is already here. One of my part-timers has to step out of work one week this month or else his SS check will disappear. Earn too much, it just goes away.
Since he started full time work at 15, that's a whole lot of value they can keep hold of.
Back in the Reagan years when SSI withholding was rising through the roof, I predicted the Manditory Euthanasia Act of 2019, which is the year I will turn 65.
This act will require that anyone over 65 to be euthanized to save money. It looks more and more likely every year.
Starving them to death is a better way to extract any remaining value. Chained CPI will make it slower, but generate more FIRE business fees.
There's a surprise. (sarc) The government promises if you pay now you will reap the rewards later then can't pay up. So they find new and exciting ways to soft kill and fast kill you so they don't need to meet payroll. All the while creating fear and distrust amongst the masses so they don't collectively take them to task and burn them at the stake. If all else fails start a world war to cull the masses.
Psycopathic doesn't begin to cover it
Charles Hugh-Smith should be sure to watch this trailer and movie. I sure plan to!
"You lie to us, we'll lie to you. You spy on us, we'll spy on you. You poison us, we'll poison you."
http://youtu.be/l8Fyawr8_m0
I am sure once confronted with this information, Boomers will muster their ranks to make the necessary sacrifices so that the next generations will have a fair shot at a decent life. ;-)
LOL...but of course! We boomers have actually worked for 35, or 40, or 45 years, so it's only "fair" that those who have worked for you know, five years, or one year, be taken care of. These kids were given everything in childhood, high school and college, so I guess it's only fair that they should just be GIVEN money and benefits and stuff, despite the fact that they've made NO contribution to society AT ALL (oh, right--except for that one summer when they went to Bolivia to help the poor farmers plant beans)...
You're right, and I don't say that sarcastically. This is why everyone who pays into SS should get out of it what they put into it, and the freeloaders should get nothing. Of course it also uncovers the fact that the entire system is a scam - because if it wasn't, and everyone's money paid in was in a 'lock-box' then there would never be an insolvency problem. Which of course leads to the fact that it is a Ponzi scheme by definition and should be shut down entirely after making good on the wealth confiscation that has been going on in order to keep up with the charade. I for one want nothing to do with any of it.
The older generations gave us PC bullshit and kept voting for the mainstream gangsters over and over again. Time for them to pay the piper.
LOL...yeah, okay, send the piper over and we'll see if he gets paid...
The target on the boomers was painted in April of 2006 by Illinois State Senator Barack Obama as he lavished praise on his “friend” Bob Rubin during the meeting of the Hamilton Project, arguably the very moment that the long shot possibility that an unknown state senator with only two years of elected office could within months become president of the United States.
The reason it was there is that the bankers had their man, and the boomers and Social Security – which was solvent at the time – would be on the chopping block to fulfill the many needs of Wall Street.
The Hamilton Project is the “think tank” sponsored by Goldman Sachs and ex-Goldman Sachs Chief Rubin and is cleverly embedded in the Brookings Institution. It was there that young Democratic Senator Obama spoke at its inauguration ( video of Obama’s speech) and said the U.S. needs more NAFTA-type agreements and needs to cut entitlements (like social security).
Then, in 2010, the New York Times in a front page article beat the banker drum for SS cuts and age increases by claiming that Social Security is “the likeliest source of the sort of large savings needed to bring projected annual deficits to sustainable levels,” giving as an anonymous source for its position three economists who it claimed were “the best minds and prolific authors on Social Security.”
It failed, however, to mention that all three had banker ties to institutions (like the Hamilton Project and Goldman Sachs) seeking entitlement cuts.
The population of the United States has increased 58.6% from 1967 when the first boomer reached 21 years of age, from 198.7 million in 1967 to 315.1% on New Year’s Day of 2013, as estimated by the U.S. Census Bureau.
During the 20 birth years of the baby boomers, the population increased 39% from 141.4 million in 1946 to 196.6 million in 1966.
During the past 20 years, from 1973 to 2013, the population has increased 48%, from 212.9 million in 1973, to the current 315.1 million.
The US population from the day the first boomer was born in 1946 up to 2013 has increased 122.8%, from 141.4 million to 315.1 million, an increase in population of 173.7 million people.
Apparently the bankers are going to finance open borders by cutting Social Security for those whose money built the "trust."
claiming that Social Security is “the likeliest source of the sort of large savings needed to bring projected annual deficits to sustainable levels”
Instead of throwing more and more details into the mix, you should point to the root:
The above statement is a complete lie (unless the authors took the freedom to conveniently commingle SS and Medicare for that statement). Medicare is the black hole sucking in budget and therefore creating the biggest deficits.
And Charles wrote that SS needs to be means-tested, which is one way to do partial cuts to make SS sustainable again (which is possible; but I do not agree with means-testing as the best approach).
Medicare is unsustainable and unfixable in its current form.
Medicare is an insurance bonanza for the insurance and medical companies and a wealth redistribution scheme for a socialist government. That was obvious when George W commingled welfare-paid Medicaid for Mexicans with tax-deducted Medicare for Americans. And Big Pharma wrote the Obamacare plan.
The major player in the Senate health care negotiations, Elizabeth Fowler, who took the lead with Max Baucus in drafting the legislation, was a prior lobbyist for WellPoint, the nation’s largest health insurance provider.
Peter Schiff has long made the case that health care is unaffordable because of too much government and too much insurance.
To prove his point, Schiff showed in 2009 how the rate of increased costs for insured procedures is three times faster than for uninsured procedures.
For uninsured procedures, such as breast implants, he showed how the cost is falling because market forces, i.e., competitive cost pressures, have kept costs down and quality up. Doctors want your business and compete for it. It’s the opposite with insurance, says Schiff, no one asks what the procedures cost.
Insurance has caused medical costs to go ballistic and the government, partnered with the big monopolies against the common good of the people, knows it. So do the billionaire middle men who are reaping fortunes in the insurance industry.
Ron Paul, M.D., nailed it: “I started medicine when there was no Medicare and no Medicaid and let me tell you, I don’t remember one time when I saw people out in the streets begging for medical care. Now we do. With managed care and now with socialized medicine coming, believe me, quality will down, costs will go up, there will be shortages, there will be lines and nobody is going to be happy.”
And familes paid their medical bills out of their weekly income. And in most cases, no problem, thank you.
As for Charles siding with Stanley Druckenmiller’s SS solution - means testing (“Means-test people like me on social security” [Druckemiller's quote - only most of us aren't like him]) - sometimes Charles goes a bit socialist. As for George Soros' former partner, Jewish $2.8 billion net worth Druckenmiller, if you study the backgrounds of many of the world’s wealthiest people, you will find they have long financed Communism and Socialism, violence and revolution.
Of course, means testing already has come somewhat into play under both programs - no limit on the amount of income taxed for Medicare and higher monthly payments after retirement, along with taxes on SS for those retireess reporting higher incomes.
This is all understandable when you realize the goal of the international bankers that own the Fed is world governance under banker- controlled world socialism.
Plus the only real change Obamacare gave us is the extension of Medicare taxation onto capital gains and dividends - so broadening the tax base, but no expense cuts (or at least a reduction of the expense increase rate).
You old dumbfucks caused this problem. Suck it.
Strauss and Howe wrote in the 4th Turning in the mid 1990s about this generational conflict. They believe that the boomers will acquiesce, they will not bankrupt their children to maintain the SS and Medicare bennies. The result will be the concept of the old sage, one who is less about self-pampering, and more about being a good citizen. The ails, aches, pains and disease of old age will be a badge of honor. The TV portrayal of the gallivanting senior is not reality.
I would like to think that this scenario rings true. Whether voluntarily or of necessity, the money does not exist, so bankrupting the next generation is futile really.
One of these days an adult will show up to have a real conversation about our circumstance, the question whether this conversation occurs before or after a serious crash. When it happens, the options will be few in my opinion, we have missed the opportunities to fix this thing, the pain to many will be excruciating. Holding on to an unsustainable system will be difficult for many, we can hear it now … “ .. I paid into the system for 30 years ..” …. etc, etc, etc … yyaawwnn.
But life goes on, people will find truth and solace in other areas besides the kind of car they drive, size of their house or value of their stock portfolio. This is not all bad.
sschu
"When it happens, the options will be few in my opinion, we have missed the opportunities to fix this thing, the pain to many will be excruciating."
I don't think the pain is actually that bad on a properly operated gallows...
Hahahahahaha sschu, "the Old Sage" indeed. Baby boomers who are "less abut self-pampering, and more about being a good citizen." WHAT FUCKING PLANET DO YOU LIVE ON???
I don't know a single baby boomer who would give up a morsel of medical care, for another person. Seriously. I know so many fucking 70 year olds who are using every single medical device and implant and surgery and cart and subsidized tai chi lesson and they're all out searching for someone to pay for their therapy. They just keep sucking in those resources, as if they were great big vacuums - and the boomers, who are a couple of years younger, watch and drool. The Greatest Generation did the same thing, BTW, with big smiles on their faces.
I'm sure such noble baby boomers exist. Most likely they're reading blogs like this one. However, I sure don't see them around me. And if you look at how they've behaved so far, why would you thing they'd change???
What boomer *will* do is keep supporting their mostly worthless spawn, until they all die. That means the boomers won't retire; they'll keep the jobs, they'll keep the benefits, they'll drain the system. But little Marshall will still have a nice room of his own. Marshall will vote for those benefits, since they keep him going, too, albeit indirectly.
The only boomers I know who "find solace in other areas besides the kind of car they drive, size of their house or value of their stock portfolios," are those who don't have any of those things. Those boomers I know who have them, love them to pieces.
I won't down-arrow you. Pleasant fantasies are always welcome.
BTW, I know loads of people who are in their mid-fifties who have NOTHING. And it isn't because they were lazy; they always worked when they could; they just could never manage to earn much. I don't think they'll get the chance to be the wise sage who voluntarily gives it up.
I'm sure such noble baby boomers exist.
You may of course be correct, these comments are not my opinion, simply what I have read from 15 years ago. Again, I would like to see it be so, but then again maybe it will not be.
It will take a financial catastrophe of epic proportions to change the boomer ways (of which I am one in case that needs to be said). And if the system is not somehow “reformed” this indeed will be the result. There is no other way really. More than a few boomers get this of course, which may be a surprise to you.
So your cynicism is well founded, whether it manifests, I guess we will see.
sschu
How come fucking public pigs can not only retire at 50 but then make as much as they want when they are "retired". Plus most make 3x more with their taxpayer paid pension than the SS recipient who can't make more than minimum wage without losing SS.
Are we going to continue to allow this !!!!!!!!
I know an old fella, about 79 or 80 years old, who retired from the Navy, went to work at the Post Office, retired from that, went to work for the City, and retired from that. He now gets 3 retirement checks and social security as well. He lives quite well. It's a dilemma, eh? He DID play by the rules laid out for him. Some would say that he is over-compensated; whereas, some would say he is getting what he "planned" for. He did what was the most profitable for him in his own retirement planning. I sure wouldn't want to be the one who knocks on his door and tells him he's now out of luck. He's one mean old Navy swabbie.
I never like being in a pyramid scam , unless I started it and I'm at the top. This pyramid I'm at the worst spot. In the fucking middle !!!!
Make social security optional and I'd be first in line to opt out. Just give me back what I've put into it and I'll sign a stack of waivers a mile high that I won't expect a nickel from the government. I'll take care of myself and my family all alone, thank you very much.
EXACTLY. I'll be happy to forego social security payments RIGHT NOW--just give me back MY money and we'll be good. Simple!
That actually might be a solution. What if we proposed a law that would pay people a lump sum NOW in exchange for a release of all of their claims on social security? I bet a lot of people would take the money.
Still trying to figure out promises? Just give me back what I have paid in over my lifetime ( not a red cent of return) and I will go away happy and ask for nothing.
Charles, it is very refreshing to read someone of your age cohort looking reality straight in the eye.
Keep it up!
Really behind it all is the relentless math of a world of 7 billion people who keep getting older and older.
The world has actually been getting older since the early 20th century, before modern medicine convinced everyone that all of their ills could be cured and surely they would be the sole human being to beat death.
You can't beat time. Not even America can.
The world has been getting older since well before "the early 20th century," no?
Auntie Zeituni finds all this quite disturbing. How will she pay for take-out delivered from the L-Street Diner to her government subsidized housing? We need to think of the less fortunate, after all.
year zero anyone?
Even though I have a decent amount of savings I would not willingly give up my benefits so some lazy ass can get MY MONEY.I have had tough jobs,worked a ton of overtime and worked shitty shifts.I shouldn't have to give my money up to some lazy fuck because he didn't want to work hard and put in overtime.
Who wants to start a petition to have all SS refunded in exchange for a waiver that no future claims will be made? I wouldn't know where to start, we need a ZH reader/lawyer to help.
SS isn't really the issue here since it is a tax and will always pay something out as long as there is inflow. The issue is one of all the excess that has been stolen and replaced with IOU's to contend with. You know they ain't paying all that back the other issue is of people on the rolls that have no business being on the rolls especially on the disability end. That can solved quite easily once the political will is there to means test people for SS eligibility. It will of course be abused unless some safeguards are put in like at a miminum you should be able to get out of the system whatever you paid in since in theory even though they collect it as a tax it is actually trust fund. Anything less is outright theft of your money.
It is not SS alone that issue but the all the entitlements and the idea that the state is on the same level as your mother and is going to always take care of you stunting your ability to take care of yourself that is the issue. That is more cultural than anything else.
These are not my words but about sums up my mindset on this whole issue concerning entitlements in general. It illustrates a larger cultural point also in this whole mess.
http://reason.com/archives/2013/05/15/america-needs-more-free-range-kids
.."It's great that we live in a wealthy country -- one with a welfare state so big that we now worry about poor people getting fat. But what makes most people happy is not comfort. It's earned success, success you struggle for.
The opposite of earned success, says psychologist Martin Seligman, is "learned helplessness." In lab experiments, when good things occurred that weren't earned, like nickels coming out of slot machines, it did not increase people's happiness. It produced helplessness. People gave up, became passive.
That passivity (and America's welfare state) is a threat to our future. Everyone goes through pain and loss. We face obstacles. It's the struggle to overcome obstacles that matters.
That's the stuff of life -- and the route to happiness and prosperity."
Most of the young people are going to be so poor, they will be even more reliant on government programs than older ones
Just as the boomers institutionalized abortion, so shall they institutionalize euthanasia. I don't want to be standing anywhere near them when they go to meet their Maker
Outside of China, the USA has the finest communist central planners on earth. We're in good hands. No need for worry.
Wartime Housing
An empire seeks to prove that all individuals are selfish in nature, incapable of working effectively without it, as its self-fulfilling prophesy. Giving it the data it wants to see, in any equation you like, is not difficult. Building the necessary gravitational cantilever is the easy part. Simply concur with its operation, explicitly.
Because the empire borrows income from future generations to ensure confidence in its continued operation, you are at war upon birth. Each time you accept a false assumption by replicating the associated behavior, you fall deeper under its spell. Before long, your time has no value, and the empire’s currency, compliance, is all that matters. Within the empire, you are either the wh- or the n-r, the master or the slave, depending upon artificial circumstance.
The line of lines is designed to destroy your spirit with time, to ensure compliance. Do not wait in line, unless you want others to see you waiting in line. School is designed to destroy your intellect with wasted effort, to ensure compliance. Capital’s labor is designed to break your body with stupid work, to ensure compliance. Work intelligently and with spirit, on your own time. Give the empire no more and no less than 10%.
Economic war is designed to place you within artificial boundaries, a prison within prisons, for the ultimate implementation of physical war, to reboot the demographic ponzi when the replication virus consumes all easily exploitable resources. Capital clear cuts, lets nature replenish itself, and blames the resulting pestilence, disease, and starvation on Act of God.
The nuclear bomb ending the last major war was a crude weapon resulting in crude technology, which is why financial instrumentation returned so quickly. Completing the reaction to get rid of all that waste is a good mental exercise, but it will not get you anywhere you want to go.
What is your time worth?
Why are there so many middle men/women between your labor and the home required to raise your children? Why is the actual utility of housing so low and its price so high? Do you really think that the top 2% of the population is the only group ‘profiting’ from the empire’s banking function, top-down family civil law? What does that tell you about military law and how you might want to raise your children?
What is your price? From a practical utility perspective, is there any other sector with more excess capacity than housing? What is the critical path to human development? Why do you suppose they built MAD derivatives? What is integral and what is derivative? What are your priorities?
Children don’t come with a book on parenting for a reason; each is meant to be unique. You will learn far more from them than they will from you. All empire beauty is a lie, hiding an ugly truth not too far from its surface. Sacrificing for the sake of your children is not something you learn in an empire. Write your own book.
You remind me of Cognitive Dissonance.
crossed with mako. +1
STOP with all the statist solutions. End social security. Let each individual manage his own wealth, and his own retirement. The premise of all such articles are massively statist, and just argue about how slavery is implemented. End the fed, both of them.
"The solution is to work backwards from what the current generation of workers can afford to pay, not to work forwards from promises made when things were different."
What, you think you can get the WS Bankster deal, where laws affecting agreements only hold when they work in your favor?
The problem with social security, IMHO, is that when it was enacted in 1935 it "was an attempt to limit what were seen as dangers in the modern American life, including old age, poverty, unemployment, and the burdens of widows and fatherless children."
I think the spirit in which it was enacted was a noble spirit. Shared noblesse oblige if you will. As moral human beings, as empathetic and sympathetic peoples, to be coldly callous to another's plight is not inherent in most of our souls (although i have noticed over the past 35 years that that attitude is becoming more prevalent).
One cannot expect the churchs and other chartible organizations to take care of everyone who needs food and shelter in their old age. I don't think it is possible. After 1935, when the population began shifting from rural farming, extended-family life (where younger generations mostly took care of their elders) to more urban manufacturing jobs with unions and retirement benefits and the family nucleus broken, was when SS should have been re-thought because it soon became a political tool for self-serving politicians garnering votes.
I don't know how they could have changed it. Possibly if you worked at a job WITH a pension, you didn't pay into it (as you had your pension you were paying in to) but you had the option of making a voluntary contribution if you so wished with the understanding you might not see those benefits ever. It was chariable. If you moved to another job without retirement benefits, you paid into it at lesser rate as you had a pension coming to you. This way, when you "retired" your SS would be much lower as there would be years where you were working a pension position. If you worked your FULL working life at a pensioned position, you would not receive SS at all as you had your pension. If you inherited wealth, you would not be elegible at all. One would think the very wealthy would contribute to the fund voluntarily any amount they might wish. Noblesse oblige again. and tax deductible.
Perhaps, too, you could have had the choice to opt out with the understanding that there would never be benefits for you. (of course there's the inevitable problem of people just spending that money over the course of their lives and ending up destitute. Maybe that is where the churches/charities would step in. That would be true SOLville. The poorhouse comes to mind.
If it was honestly invested and never pilfered (and i haven't done numbers on this so maybe i am wrong) there should have been plenty of money in the fund to be self-sustaining.
Dunno, just thinking where it went wrong and what could have been done somewhere along the line to prevent where we are now. It's a complex issue. Helping your fellow human while not destroying everyone in the process. The biggest change in society was the vanishing of the extended family where three generations lived in the same house and the grandparents looked after the grandchildren while the parents worked. I always thought that was a perfect setup actually!. That was normal. When that went by the wayside, the family safety net was gone and here we are today. The less fortunate need to live and they are for the most part just grateful to have that substinance check, but the very fortunate want their inheritances, pensions, benefits AND their SS. It's all about greed. A truly abhorrent facet of the human nature.
*I am a baby boomer, never had a job with a pension or vesting offered, never had a 401K or IRA, have worked since I was 14 and full time since I was 18 but never at more than $20/hr even at my peak earnings. SS is for someone like me as you cannot amass a 500K retirement savings and investments on that pre-take-home pay when raising a family. You maybe have a tiny nest egg (if you are lucky) so SS in addition to that keeps you from living in abject poverty or a tent. I think that is the purpose for which it was intended and it went horribly astray.
This guy never gets it. It's the principal that bothers many people, but he keeps putting people down by insinuating that we are all "self absorbed".
Here's the deal: You have been paying into SS all your life, with no way around it if you are a working person. You get NO INTEREST on that money the gov't takes from you.
Imagine if I made the government pay me compounded interest on what they take. It would be a massive amount of money they owe me when I turn 65. This is how banks operate...by compounding the interest...
But we don't get that choice to charge the government for "borrowing" our money (which is what they are doing).
Then, many people die before they collect a dime and many die not long after they "retire".
Everyone knows something has to change on this. But for christs sake quit with your little bitchy attitude, most of us don't have royalties from Porn-lite books like you do.
"The current 115 million full-time workers cannot sustainably support the 110 million people currently drawing Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid--and the number of retirees entering these entitlement program will rise by millions in the decade ahead."
You forgot one little detail....
22 million of the 115 work for the government, and government spending accounts for another 18 million jobs.
So in actuality, about 75 million are trying to support the 110 PLUS the 40 million American idiots who suffer under the delusion of being "gainfully employed taxpayers."
That's 75 million shitty private sector jobs trying to support themselves AND 150 million. I wonder how that's gonna work out.
Is anybody here surprised that CHS has been sucked into the mis-framed argument that makes Granny the parasite?
Much of the problem could be fixed (technically...and if we had a stable economy) by fixing the healthcare system (all of it). Insurance companies make the prices higher, too. The same principle driving Insurance companies is behind the Student loan situation, too. It goes something like this...... I have a relative that wanted to get into one of these alternative medicine programs (accupressure) but the program she wanted did not have the Federal Student Loan program. They told her they were in the process of getting it. She didn't have the cash so she waited. When the school switched over to offering the student loans (FAFSA), she still could not afford to go because the School increased the tuition. The maximum she could take out in student loans was short what she actually needed, so she still would have to have the cash...Or go to other means of loans. It's crazy.
That's how Insurance works. Before insurance got invoved in massage therapy, you could go get a massage for $20-25 dollars. Now, many insurance companies have massage therapy coverage....And the price for a massage therapist is at least $75. If you have a co-pay of $25, you are still paying what it used to cost before the Insurance company got involved!
That's not a flaw in the system.
It's a feature.
You aren't cynical enough.
Warning, massive generalizations follow. . .
Burn down all the gods, idols, and institutions of the ponzi bitches and sellouts, I've seen what the boomers and their enablers the "greatest generation" have voted for and done while I have been quietly building my own future security consisting of self sufficiency, technical training, and the skills, tools, land, and hard assets I will need (particularly consumables). I will decide the price for my services and knowledge or if I will even offer them to the slack minded masses that voted for their personal comfort and security over the freedom and self determination of the unrepresented responsible individuals. You reap what you've sown.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gdwlPJUoEwI
It's bigger than that. Check this out 1 hr FBI Whistleblower a clip which is removed every week. If too long, just watch fragments and see what yuo think.
Unfortunately, people like you will be taken down with the rest of 'em. No matter how great you are and how better you are than everyone else, when the ship goes down everyone on it will drown.
It is possible to live very, very, very cheaply, as an old person. Here is one of my favorite videos from You Tube. You don't need to watch more than 30 seconds of it to get the idea: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4mQ4A9FPt5Y
The video was taken in 2006 in a village in Ukraine. However, the elderly lady peeling the potatoes isn't all that different from my Ukrainian American grandmother (who died a few years ago), or her siblings. Some of them aged in rural shacks, too, in the U.S., BY CHOICE. You probably won't like the video; it is very frank. She is loud, because she is deaf. She is louder, because she drinks some vodka for her aches and pains. She doesn't bother with dentures; you just cook stuff longer; that's all. She is stout, because that's what lets you survive, historically, in Eastern Europe.
No-one lives with this lady. She takes care of herself. She and her fellow villagers each have a goat and some chickens, maybe a dog, maybe a cow. They toddle around. No home health aides, no special walkers (stick=cane). Their average cash income is about $30 per month.
The baby boomers could live like this EASILY. They just don't like it because it isn't posh and classy and high tech, and no-one pumps chemicals into you at the very end.
My mom's favorite book is "Old, Poor, Alone and Happy: How to Live Nicely on Nearly Nothing." She is a Yankee, not an Eastern European. The principle is the same, of course.
I HOPE to grow old like the lady in the video. Beats the hell out of the assisted living centers and dementia units that I've visited.
(BTW, my parents, being good children, bought my grandmother a nice house near theirs, so she'd be nearby for her last years. She liked that, but she would have liked her own old house, too (which wasn't actually a shack, though it was modest). Her sister made it to the age of 89 in a tiny, tiny house that used to be the family barn. She could have moved somewhere fancier but she didn't want to!!)