Beware young people, the Boomers want your BLOOD!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Mn_Mark]

Re: Beware young people, the Boomers want your BLOOD!!!!!!!!!!!!!

So basically, even though we shouldn't count on getting enough money to pay for "more than a few loaves of bread a month", we should just shut up and take it because it's our "obligation"? Seriously? That's your viewpoint? You knew it was destined for collapse but now that you think it might not collapse until after you get yours, it's all gravy?

Try this thought experiment: Let's pass a law today where every dollar we pay in taxes is owed to the current taxpayers upon their retirement. But since we need cash to keep the government running we will loan it from our retirement system to the government to use for current expenses. Then we will claim the system "owes us" money since we (our elected officials anyway) agreed that the tax money would accrue to our benefit even though we also got the benefit of the roads, military, police etc that it paid for in the meantime. This is what Social Security does just not on the same scale. To then say that our children and grandchildren have an "obligation" to pay for this is absurd.

As a necessary disclaimer: I don't advocate letting retirees die in the streets but we need to be honest about the situation to resolve it.

The younger folk seem to think that it's some kind of new idea that they might not get back from the Social Security system what they paid in. It's not. Like I said, I've been paying for more than 35 years and haven't gotten one cent back from it. And as I said, since I was in my early 20s I figured I probably wouldn't get a cent because it would go bankrupt. That thing you're grumbling about - paying into a system that might not be around by the time you retire - is nothing new. Back in the 80s they did a big overhaul and increased the payroll tax a huge chunk to "fix" Social Security. I've been paying around 15% of my income ever since and did not expect to get anything from it.

"You knew it was destined for collapse but now that you think it might not collapse until after you get yours, it's all gravy?" Yeah, I am actually surprised that it hasn't collapsed yet 30 years after I expected it would. Now I think that I may actually live to get some payments out of it, and that would be pretty great since I put in 35 years of payments. I'm amused to see that the younger folks are bitching about the same things I bitched about. But in a way it kind of works. I paid for the retirements of the old people for the last 35 years. Before long it will be my turn to get some retirement money from the younger folks (like you, presumably). Then you will get your turn eventually. How is that so wrong?

You can frame it as some kind of outrageous exploitation, putting a "debt on the backs of our children and grandchildren"...or you can frame it as the exact same sort of older generation-younger generation relationship that there has always been. Children are cared for when they are young by parents, and then they care for the parents when the parents are old, and then they are cared for by their children when they in turn are old. And on and on....and every older generation that is being cared for by the middle-aged generation was once a middle-aged generation themselves caring for an older generation.

Basically what young people like you (I presume you are relatively young) are saying is: screw the old people. I'll take care of myself. I won't put the burden on MY children [famous last words]. If, back in your middle age, you old people took care of the generation before you by paying payroll taxes, I don't give a crap - that's your problem. Suckers! Guess you were stupid for helping that older generation! But I'm not going to be a sucker like you - screw inter-generational social responsibility...you're just a bunch of selfish old people who expect me to work to support you. Actually it sounds like your generation are the selfish ones.

[leegs]

Re: Beware young people, the Boomers want your BLOOD!!!!!!!!!!!!!

An interesting discussion with good points-of-view all around. I will opine that the focus on SS is perhaps a bit misplaced. Firstly it's degree of insolvency has always been overstated, and from what I understand, it would not be terribly hard to fix it, in spite of the demographic challenges. As Lek has pointed out many times, just raising the cap would be good start.

The big issue IMO is the health care situation, and it's perfectly illustrated by the propaganda one hears about the ACA, i.e. it can only work on the backs of young people. As a general principle I don't find that to be terribly problematic, in the same way that I don't object to SS, and as describe by Mn_Mark above.

But I do find it offensive in the current context, where the boomers (and the previous generation) have really had it pretty good, and are hell bent on keeping the party going on the backs of their kids and especially grandkids. And it's not like it's an abstract or far future event. It is happening right NOW that their offspring are facing tough times comparatively - high unemployment, college debt, high health care costs (even without subsidizing the old folks), expensive housing, etc. Meanwhile Grandpa's hip replacement has healed nicely and he is off on a 3 week jaunt to Vietnam, 45 years after having dropped Agent Orange on it.

[Fox]

Re: Beware young people, the Boomers want your BLOOD!!!!!!!!!!!!!

well Mark, my sympathies to you. Being at the edge of the boomer/buster line you get to be labeled a boomer while you are just as screwed as us GenXers. It's true that not all baby boomers were able to ride the post war boom that gave the generation such great advantage and sense of entitlement. However getting hostile at us "young folk" and defending you "old folk" is only distracting from a very serious generational and economic problem.

Our current economic situation is the end game of this problem. SS has been "solvent" for longer than any one has expected because Clinton changed the inflation calculation so the SS payments are below Real inflation (see Shadowstats). We have all been paying more and getting less since 1996. How much more we pay and how much less we get depends on our age. You will get less than your parents, I will get less than you, my children even less still.

Here's a very real and current example: Boomer Teacher's in Ontario (with gold plated benefits) paid only 2.5% of their salaries into the pension plan, tax payers contributed another 2.5%. They got to retire at 55 with full pension and benefits; 54 if they banked up their 25 sick days a year (that is only 9 months long). Now my GenXer ex pays 13% of her income into the pension plan, taxpayers contributing another 13%. Early retirement at 55 is reduced to 75% of full pension, and the full pension benefits are being scaled back with each new contract. Oh and sick days have been reduced to 10 per year and they cannot be banked. And she's still of the few lucky ones to be on the Public servant gravy train, us in the private sector are not looking at much of a future. And meanwhile, we have to pay for books, supplies, and school trips because our school boards can't afford to anymore

You may have been paying for 35 years but you have also gotten a lot back. You got to enjoy the days of $0.70 a gallon gas with 10mpg muscle cars. You could take trips around the world on the cheap with an extremely strong currency. You got to buy a house in your twenties, your choice of careers and where to practice them. Your taxes were lower, the services available, higher. Did you actually get to enjoy all of that? Maybe not, but you did get to enjoy more of it than I did.

We "young folk" (I'm 44 btw) are not saying "screw you old people" we are saying "We don't have the resources to support you. Show your appreciation for what you have been by being gracious, sharing what you do have, and living more humble, because at the end of the day, you didn't actually pay for everything you received."

Or you can continue to tell me how selfish I am because I can't afford to pay for your retirement.

[DSpencer]

Re: Beware young people, the Boomers want your BLOOD!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Then you will get your turn eventually. How is that so wrong?

You've already claimed I may not get my turn and you're surprised the system hasn't already collapsed. What's wrong with me paying hundreds of thousands of dollars into a system that may give me a few loaves of bread per month in my old age in return?

You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink. How could I spell out the inequity of this situation any clearer to you?

Your other argument seems to be along the lines of: It's fair because past generations had to deal with it also. Pardon the hyperbole but this is like saying that it's ok to beat your kids if your parents beat you. It also doesn't make sense if the system is unsustainable and someone is left holding the bag.

Lastly, you claim that this is the exact same kind of young people caring for old people that has always happened. I disagree. I think there is something very different when we replace the traditional, voluntary support systems of family and community with a government program.

You bitched about the system when you were younger. I'm bitching about it now. I can't speak for you, but I can tell you that my attitude would be completely different if I was paying the exact same amount of money, but doing it voluntarily to repay my loving parents for raising me.

[DSpencer]

Re: Beware young people, the Boomers want your BLOOD!!!!!!!!!!!!!

As Lek has pointed out many times, just raising the cap would be good start.

The cap is already rising. It's gone up $29,100 in the last 10 years. Of course it's mathematically trivial to fix. The current workers pay more in, current retirees take less out, or a combination of the two.

The problem is that if current workers pay in more then (theoretically) they should be entitled to more upon their retirement. Since the money is paid out immediately as benefits or loaned to the rest of the government and then spent, this creates an even bigger unfunded liability in the future.

[flintlock]

Re: Beware young people, the Boomers want your BLOOD!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I'm at the tail end of the baby boomers. I've been paying into Social Security for more than 35 years, paying the costs of the generation(s) ahead of me. I have no idea how many hundreds of thousands of dollars I've paid into it that I would have preferred to invest for myself. Now I find the generation behind me grumbling and saying they shouldn't have to pay because there's nothing in it for them.

My thought is that this is part of what it means to be in a society as it is currently understood. If the system has been set up so that each generation is paying for the generation that is getting old ahead of it, then that's the way it works. The younger generation pays during their working lifetime to support the older generations. When you GenX'ers and GenY'ers and Millenials are old, the generations younger than you will be paying for you. That's how it goes. You're not so special that you should be exempted from the same obligation that the generations before you had. And you will probably feel differently about it when you are retired. which will come sooner than you imagine.

At the same time, I remember grumbling myself about it when I was younger. And I have never planned on getting any Social Security. I could see it was destined for fiscal collapse back when I was in my early 20s. I've always figured I would be entirely on my own in providing for my old age, and if I do somehow get something from SS I will consider it a surprising bonus. In all likelihood they will either start reducing your payments based on your net worth or else pay out in increasingly worthless dollars that won't buy more than a few loaves of bread a month anyway.

I am at the tail end of the boomers too and I see your point. I think what a lot of people have a problem with is that for the boomers, the benefits have grown to an unrealistic level and the system will collapse long before the younger people paying in now will see their share. It really is Ponzi in nature. Yet they are quite determined for the most part that no reform or change will ever be allowed during their lifetimes. I am quite confident that our generation will never see the payouts that my parents have seen. Not as much in SS payments as in medical. Two knee replacements, cataract surgery, the list is huge. Doctor visits are literally weekly. Often for neurotic old people problems like aches and pains. An 81 year old with aches and pains, who'd of thunk it!? And don't think companies have not figured out how to milk it for all its worth. My Mom said they send her CPAP stuff she doesn't even request. Of course they just bill medicare.

Not only will benefits be cut but the age will be increased and I think the whole system will be unrecognizable by the time we can retire. But by then those responsible will be long gone of course.

[ER59]

Re: Beware young people, the Boomers want your BLOOD!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I am at the tail end of the boomers too and I see your point. I think what a lot of people have a problem with is that for the boomers, the benefits have grown to an unrealistic level and the system will collapse long before the younger people paying in now will see their share. It really is Ponzi in nature. Yet they are quite determined for the most part that no reform or change will ever be allowed during their lifetimes. I am quite confident that our generation will never see the payouts that my parents have seen. Not as much in SS payments as in medical. Two knee replacements, cataract surgery, the list is huge. Doctor visits are literally weekly. Often for neurotic old people problems like aches and pains. An 81 year old with aches and pains, who'd of thunk it!? And don't think companies have not figured out how to milk it for all its worth. My Mom said they send her CPAP stuff she doesn't even request. Of course they just bill medicare.

Not only will benefits be cut but the age will be increased and I think the whole system will be unrecognizable by the time we can retire. But by then those responsible will be long gone of course.

I am 55, my mom is 86 and I can relate to every word.
+1

[Mn_Mark]

Re: Beware young people, the Boomers want your BLOOD!!!!!!!!!!!!!

You may have been paying for 35 years but you have also gotten a lot back. You got to enjoy the days of $0.70 a gallon gas with 10mpg muscle cars. You could take trips around the world on the cheap with an extremely strong currency. You got to buy a house in your twenties, your choice of careers and where to practice them. Your taxes were lower, the services available, higher. Did you actually get to enjoy all of that? Maybe not, but you did get to enjoy more of it than I did.

We "young folk" (I'm 44 btw) are not saying "screw you old people" we are saying "We don't have the resources to support you. Show your appreciation for what you have been by being gracious, sharing what you do have, and living more humble, because at the end of the day, you didn't actually pay for everything you received."

Or you can continue to tell me how selfish I am because I can't afford to pay for your retirement.

I don't blame young people for not wanting to be forced to pay into the Social Security system or for feeling there is no realistic expectation that they will get out of it anything like what they put into it. I am a pretty right-wing, free-market guy and frankly I would idealistically prefer there be no Social Security or Medicare at all, and that people save for their own old age. The reality, apparently, is that when that is the way things are done a whole lot of people do not save for their old age and it ends up being unpleasant to have a lot of starving, freezing old people dying in abject poverty. So society said, we're going to force you to save something for your old age by taking it out of your paycheck. Then the people who run the programs screw them up by giving out a lot more benefits than they planned for.

Personally, I've never expected to get any meaningful SS and I have saved and invested accordingly. And if nothing unexpectedly bad happens, I will hopefully not need SS anyway. I have never once made any plans expecting to get it. I still expect them to start to means-test it, and for me to be disqualified. (Assuming there is a means test imposed, that is another way that progressive society penalizes the productive: I pay into SS for 35 years, AND save and invest beyond that amount paid into SS in order to provide for my own old age - and my reward will be to be disqualified from getting any of the SS I paid into the system back. If I had been irresponsible and saved nothing for myself, I would qualify.)

I am also sympathetic to younger people who look at this big bulge of boomers that are retiring and think, there are fewer in our generations and we're having to pay for all those boomers' retirements...and we have a lower standard of living than they did and can less afford to pay. I sympathize because I felt the same way. In my teenage years in the 1970s I sat in lines at gas stations hoping they wouldn't run out before I got to the head of the line. The price of gas quadrupled from 29 cents a gallon when I was a child to over $1 when I was a teenager. Stagflation reduced our standards of living considerably. I'm not sure any younger person has experienced a drop in living standards like we experienced in the 1970s. And of course, I've been living through all the deterioration since then, just like the younger people. I pay the same high prices at the grocery store. (Though I will say that I am very glad I got my college education before the costs ramped up like they have, thanks to that wonderful government guaranteed student loan program, which pushed tuition into the stratosphere. More progressive stupidity resulting in unintended consequences.) Nevertheless I am generally sympathetic to any "get big government out of my pocket" argument since that's how I feel.

I don't like collectivist solutions to social problems, and if we could eliminate social programs like Social Security and Medicare and go back to a system where everyone saved for their own retirement (or didn't, and went hungry), then I would ideologically support that even though it would mean that me and people my age were the most screwed because we paid for the older generation for our whole working lives and we're going to get nothing for it.

But the reality is we're not going to get rid of SS. It will be tweaked but we're not getting rid of it, at least not via the voting booth. (Though a hyperinflation or a revolution might get rid of it.)

I guess I would just say that I object to the language Mega used in introducing this topic. Boomers do not "want your blood". Boomers are not "vile self-serving scum." Boomers are not "freeloading f8cks". We worked and paid into the system our whole working lives and supported the generation before us. And because there were so many boomers, and thus so many paying in, things worked very nicely for the generation before us. Now we're retiring and because the system was set up where the current generation pays for the older generation, you younger folks are proportionately more burdened than we were. It's understandable you don't like it, and I think you can be assured that things will be tweaked to reduce our benefits and your burden.

I will also note that younger people tend to be the most progressive and thus are supporting the very kinds of government interventions that implemented these unworkable social programs...and in fact tend to support implementing even more stupid and drastic collectivist solutions like imposing "carbon taxes" or international "wealth taxes" and sending the money to Africa. They disproportionately voted for Obama and Pelosi and Reid...hard to feel too sorry for them when they get bit by the kind of government programs they want. Apparently they only want programs where they get paid other people's money...not the ones where they are expected to pay for other people like the retired.

[thriftyandboringinohio]

Re: Beware young people, the Boomers want your BLOOD!!!!!!!!!!!!!

There is an aspect of Social Security and Medicare that bypasses the ideology.

I hold that those two programs are important for a thriving economy.
They create a fixed worst-case scenario, and thereby encourage entrepreneurs and investors.
People can take more risk when they know that starvation and homelessness are off the table.
If it all goes wrong, at least they can take a job mowing lawns, and get a small flat with food and medical care when they are old.

[aaron]

Re: Beware young people, the Boomers want your BLOOD!!!!!!!!!!!!!

You can frame it as some kind of outrageous exploitation, putting a "debt on the backs of our children and grandchildren"...or you can frame it as the exact same sort of older generation-younger generation relationship that there has always been. Children are cared for when they are young by parents, and then they care for the parents when the parents are old, and then they are cared for by their children when they in turn are old. And on and on....and every older generation that is being cared for by the middle-aged generation was once a middle-aged generation themselves caring for an older generation.

Basically what young people like you (I presume you are relatively young) are saying is: screw the old people. I'll take care of myself. I won't put the burden on MY children [famous last words]. If, back in your middle age, you old people took care of the generation before you by paying payroll taxes, I don't give a crap - that's your problem. Suckers! Guess you were stupid for helping that older generation! But I'm not going to be a sucker like you - screw inter-generational social responsibility...you're just a bunch of selfish old people who expect me to work to support you. Actually it sounds like your generation are the selfish ones.

The system was set up for one generation to take care of the next. Now it has become genX supporting both boomers AND their parents. How many years must genX pay for their free health care while finding the govt's solution is to pay more? And, these same people who have been enjoying free health care for 30 years and are first to vote down any law that might extend such benefits to anybody else. "Kids should just get a job. they are just lazy". The thing was, it truly was easier back then. Man could work. Woman at home. 3 kids. House. 2 big cars. What the heck is wrong with young people today they exclaim.

Regardless, it is all Kabuki theater. We have seen the government can print trillions with no repercussions. Do you think the world cares if we pay a pittance to our "elderly" and give healthcare to kids? That money will come from further borrowing; it will not even make the news when IOUs are shuffled between imaginary departments. FED has 4.5 trillion in "assets" and growing daily. They can swallow twice that, and twice again. Japan proves it every day. The whole world can pay.

[aaron]

Re: Beware young people, the Boomers want your BLOOD!!!!!!!!!!!!!

They are the most out of touch, and gladly, starting to leave power. They actually think the world still works like it did in the middle of the last century, while Boomers at least hear their kids whining.

Really, I bet we see private blood banks for old people to be rejuvenated within a year. Then after the first HIV case, the government will have to regulate the procedure. Then it will be a government mandated covered service and the affordable care act will continue to grow in its unaffordability. Around this time, Big Pharma ABC Inc, will patent some twist of a DNA they found and make artificial blood for 19 years until the patent runs out. I will be dead by then having donated the last of my blood, long since the time my last child gave theirs to pay for my ACA. Of course, at that point, many Boomers and their parents will still be alive(ish).

With so much youth unemployment, it may have immediate economic benefits.


See this movie (it is actually quite fun to watch with our economic understanding from iTulip):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daybreakers
Daybreakers is a 2009 science-fiction thriller film written and directed by Australian filmmakers Michael and Peter Spierig. The film takes place in a futuristic world overrun by vampires. A vampiric corporation sets out to capture and farm the remaining humans while researching a blood substitute. Lead vampire hematologist Edward Dalton's (Ethan Hawke) work is interrupted by human survivors led by former vampire "Elvis" (Willem Dafoe), who has a cure that can save the human species.

[Woodsman]

Re: Beware young people, the Boomers want your BLOOD!!!!!!!!!!!!!

...I bet we see private blood banks for old people to be rejuvenated within a year. Then after the first HIV case, the government will have to regulate the procedure. Then it will be a government mandated covered service and the affordable care act will continue to grow in its unaffordability. Around this time, Big Pharma ABC Inc, will patent some twist of a DNA they found and make artificial blood for 19 years until the patent runs out. I will be dead by then having donated the last of my blood, long since the time my last child gave theirs to pay for my ACA. Of course, at that point, many Boomers and their parents will still be alive(ish).

The Force is strong in this one.

[shiny!]

Re: Beware young people, the Boomers want your BLOOD!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Really, I bet we see private blood banks for old people to be rejuvenated within a year. Then after the first HIV case, the government will have to regulate the procedure. Then it will be a government mandated covered service and the affordable care act will continue to grow in its unaffordability. Around this time, Big Pharma ABC Inc, will patent some twist of a DNA they found and make artificial blood for 19 years until the patent runs out. I will be dead by then having donated the last of my blood, long since the time my last child gave theirs to pay for my ACA. Of course, at that point, many Boomers and their parents will still be alive(ish).

With so much youth unemployment, it may have immediate economic benefits.

This is sadly one of the most prescient posts I've ever read.

[lektrode]

Re: Beware young people, the Boomers want your BLOOD!!!!!!!!!!!!!

This is sadly one of the most prescient posts I've ever read.

+1 (to both yers and woody's...)

yep - only somewhat ironically...

[jpetr48]

Re: Beware young people, the Boomers want your BLOOD!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I have been part of itulip community for 4 years. I have never read such a divisive posting among so many well educated intelligent and generous people.

Travel to Europe Brazil Saudi Arabia or parts of Northern Africa and then tell me how repressed we are as a nation and people or how the boomers are screwing everyone.

I found the best way to stop feeling sorry for myself is serve and give to those who are much less fortunate regardless of age, religion, political affiliation. And you can start in your neighborhood as we have one of the most diverse populations here in the US.

I am turning 58 and almost at one time a few years ago bought into this rhetoric of its the boomers fault. Accountability starts with you and end there too no matter what age.