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but...but...but....I thought debt didn't matter?
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/...oomers/263291/
Ultimately, members of my father's generation--generally defined as those born between 1946 and 1964--are reaping more than they sowed. They graduated smack into one of the strongest economic expansions in American history. They needed less education to snag a decent-salaried job than their children do, and a college education cost them a small fraction of what it did for their children or will for their grandkids. One income was sufficient to get a family ahead economically. Marginal federal income-tax rates have fallen steadily, with rare exception, since boomers entered the labor force; government retirement benefits have proliferated. At nearly every point in their lives, these Americans chose to slough the costs of those tax cuts and spending hikes onto future generations.
The Dow Jones industrial average rose twelvefold from the time the first boomers began working until last year, when they began to cash out their retirement. (The growth trend over the 12 years since I entered the workforce suggests that the Dow will double exactly once before I retire.) They will leave the workforce far wealthier than their parents did, with even more government promises awaiting them. Boomers will be the first generation of retirees to fully enjoy the Medicare prescription-drug benefit; because Social Security payouts rise faster than price inflation, they will draw more-generous retirement benefits than their parents did, in real terms--at their children's expense. The Urban Ins ute estimated last year that a couple retiring in 2011, having both earned average wages, will accrue about $200,000 more in Medicare and Social Security benefits over their lifetimes than they paid in taxes to support those programs.
Those retirees and near-retirees bequeath a shambles to their offspring. Young people are unemployed at historically high levels. Global compe ion is stronger than ever, but American ins utions have not adapted to prepare new workers for its challenges. Boomers have run up incomes for the very wealthiest Americans, shrunk the middle class, and, via careless borrowing and reckless financial engineering, driven the economy into the worst recession in 80 years. The Pew Research Center reports that middle-class families today are 5 percentless wealthy than their parents were at the same point in their lives, after adjusting for inflation, even though families today are far more likely to include two wage earners. Another Pew report shows that those ages 55 to 64 are 10 percent wealthier today, even after the Great Recession, than Americans of that age bracket were in 1984. Those younger than 35 are 68 percent less wealthy than the same bracket was in 1984.
The baby boomers built an economy where young people increasingly need a college education to move into the middle class, or even to simply hold on to the middle-class lifestyle they were born into. But the boomers who run state legislatures and private universities have collectively pushed the costs of that now-requisite education into the stratosphere. Tuition has risen at twice the rate of inflation: In today's dollars, tuition, room, and board at a four-year public college ran nearly $6,800 per year in 1967; it costs about $13,300 today. Private-college tabs have more than doubled in that time. The increase has saddled young workers with more than $1 trillion in student debt--the average college student today borrows six times more from the federal government to finance her education, per year, than the average student in 1970. The boomers keep their low taxes, and their alma maters gain prestige, but the next generation of workers starts with a debt boulder strapped to its back. All for no apparent gain. Today, Pew says, men who grew up in the middle class are just as likely to earn less than their fathers did (adjusting for inflation) as they are to earn more.
Members of my father's generation reaped the benefits of dirt-cheap fossil fuels through most of their working lives, when gasoline price increases ran well below inflation, freeing up cash for them to save or spend on things their children now cannot afford. Because gas was so cheap, they burned too much of it (my father has never owned a car that averaged better than 20 miles per gallon), filling the atmosphere with carbon dioxide to levels that scientists warn will likely warm the globe by several degrees. Climate change will cost trillions of dollars to avert or adapt to. It's almost impossible to overstate this level of buck-passing.
Perhaps most egregiously, the baby boomers, led by boomer-coddling leaders in Washington, are bequeathing a runaway national debt and a gaping federal budget shortfall that their children and grandchildren will have to pay--through higher taxes or reduced benefits, or both--if they don't want the country to go broke. Balancing America's future receipts and obligations would require all taxes to rise by 35 percent "immediately and permanently," and all federal en lement benefits to decrease by another 35 percent, the International Monetary Fund estimated last year. Shielding boomers from that pain--as most so-called deficit hawks in Washington propose--would dramatically increase the bill for everyone else. Brigham Young University economists Richard Evans and Kerk Phillips and Boston University economist Laurence Kotlikoff published a paper in January that projected a 1-in-3 chance that the U.S. economy will reach "game over" within 30 years. In their definition, "game over" means that the government's obligations to seniors (thanks again, boomers) will exceed 100 percent of everyone else's earnings. In other words, all the young workers in America together won't earn enough to pay down the government's obligations to their parents.But the numbers on the laptop remind me how fleeting much of that progress was--and how boomers chose short-term gratification when they had opportunities to secure a better future for generations to follow. Classic example: Instead of devoting the budget surpluses of the late '90s to social programs that desperately needed them, they voted themselves tax cuts in 2001 and 2003, and an expanded Medicare benefit shortly after--a move a Congressional Budget Office study from that era suggests raised the expected tax rate on future generations from 29 percent to 53 percent. They borrowed heavily to cope with the economic sluggishness of the 2000s and, in so doing, inflated a housing bubble that, when it popped, triggered the Great Recession.
Median-income growth has stagnated for women and minorities over the past decade. The typical African-American today has less wealth than his or her parents did, according to Pew. Labor-force participation for women this year hit its lowest level since 1991.
And Congress? Well, Capitol Hill is where I realize I'll win this trial. Baby boomers chose the leaders currently paralyzing Washington, and those leaders are, by and large, boomers. My father's cohort has formed a generational majority in every Congress since the dawn of the George W. Bush administration. Electorally, boomers vote in dramatically larger numbers than anyone else. The Census Bureau reports there were 81 million Americans ages 45 to 64 in 2010, of whom slightly more than half voted. They made up about 43 percent of the electorate--almost as much as those 25 to 44 and those 65 and older combined.
As afternoon descends over the fir trees, I call my father over and show him this statistic. Look, I say. That government you say is crippling America? You and your friends own it.
" ," he says.
My emotional argument seals the case. Where I finally best my dad is on the question of why his cohort hasn't stopped the freight trains of generational woe that have been barreling down America's tracks for a few decades now. The question he can't answer is this: How could the members of a generation so willing to lecture everyone else on personal responsibility not recognize, even at this stage in their lives, their collective responsibility for ending this mess?
You used to be such an idealistic generation, I say. You were going to change the world. Yet you've known all this was coming and haven't tried seriously to stop it. You've reaped all the benefits and left the rest of us the bill. And you knew what you were doing. Why?
A great article that presents both sides. I've only posted the X-Y side of the debate because it's far more compelling, especially statistically.Only later do I notice the knife he's left in my side. We are sitting at the kitchen table. He is joking about regrets ("You raise these kids, and then they turn on you!") when he suddenly becomes serious and offers me a rare piece of fatherly advice. "We didn't stop it. Maybe someday, Max can have the same discussion with you and ask you why you didn't stop it. He'll get the article out. He'll say, 'You knew about it! You knew about it even more than [your parents] did!' "
The knife twists. I am 34 years old. I have some pretty successful friends. How have we sacrificed to balance the budget, to slow climate change, to deliver better opportunity for our children? We haven't. I own an SUV, and I don't compost my trash. We are barreling, generationally, toward higher and higher levels of carbon emissions; a demographer from the Max Planck Ins ute for Demographic Research estimated last year that an individual's emissions rise some 50 percent from the time he is in his 30s until the time he retires. Worst of all, we don't seem to care about changing things: Only about a third of registered 25-to-44-year-olds voted in the 2010 election, compared with half of registered baby boomers.
If my father is a leech on the future, then I am becoming one, too.
"Your generation should be thinking about how you'll step up to the plate," my dad says, brown eyes boring into mine. "And you also need to step up to the plate, learning from us about the politics. Just say no to the kind of politics that get in the way of what you perceive are the solution."
I'd also like to say that I'm much angrier at my generation(s) (born in 79', consider myself X) for not doing anything about it, particularly the not voting part.
Last edited by symple19; 09-19-2013 at 02:02 PM.
but...but...but....I thought debt didn't matter?
I obviously hasn't at these levels. I like to use the topic of debt to expose boomer ignorance and hypocrisy.
You think you have paid in more than you have gotten out or what you are expecting to get out come SS and medicare years?
http://www.economist.com/node/21563725More worrying is that this generation seems to be able to leverage its size into favourable policy. Governments slashed tax rates in the 1980s to revitalise lagging economies, just as boomers approached their prime earning years. The average federal tax rate for a median American household, including income and payroll taxes, dropped from more than 18% in 1981 to just over 11% in 2011. Yet sensible tax reforms left less revenue for the generous benefits boomers have continued to vote themselves, such as a prescription-drug benefit paired with inadequate premiums. Deficits exploded. Erick Eschker, an economist at Humboldt State University, reckons that each American born in 1945 can expect nearly $2.2m in lifetime net transfers from the state—more than any previous cohort.
How about we get the new retirees and their employees to pay their bill?
Summing up the Boomer talking points -"You young whippersnappers are so selfish, jealous, and unrealistic for not working your asses off for meager pay and then using all that money to support our retirement lifestyle!"
Don't worry son. You'll get a participation trophy.Summing up the Boomer talking points -
I'm not attacking guys like CosmicCowboy or TeyshaBlue. Afaik, Cosmic pays his taxes and takes good care of his employees. Teysha also seems like a good dude.
Per par, there's a lot of trolling in here. But the fact remains that it's a shared responsibility to fix the ups.
Imo, it starts with the younger generations getting out there and removing the s bags via the ballot box. Let's see what happens when 3rd parties, collectively, get 10+ percent of the vote. That's when things will start to change
jmo
Honestly the last boomers alive will be ed cause when our generation becomes the majority we'll tear them a new one.
death panels?
Funny...when the last boomers are dying you will be staring retirement in the face and voting your ass off for those social security and medicare benefits you hate now.
now thanks to the "pat on the head" policies of en led white boomers who census minorities, divide the population by race, and put forth affirmative action as a feel good measure, future gen Yer white people will be persecuted at the hands of a majority minority nation.
well done, gots.
"Not The One"
I'm not the one who made the world what it is today
I'm not the one who caused the problems started long ago
But now I deal with all the consequences that troubles our times
I carry on and never once have even questioned why
I'm innocent
But the wieght of the world is on my shoulders
I'm innocent
But the battles started are far from over
We're not the ones who leave the homeless in the streets at night
We're not the ones who've kept minorities and women down
Still we grow and then the problems they become our own
We carry on without even realizing why
We're innocent
But the weight of the world is on our shoulders
We're innocent
But the battles left us are far from over
We're not the ones whose pollution blackened our skies
And ruined our streams
We're not the ones who made the nuclear bombs
That threaten our lives
We're not the ones who let the children starve in faraway lands
We're not the ones who made the streets unsafe to walk at night
And even if we try and not become so overwhelmed
And if we make some contribution to the plight we see
Still our descendents will inherit our mistakes of today
They'll suffer just the same as we and never wonder why
lol scared widdle wacist!
Fuzzy that article is full of holes written by a person with an ax to grind. Boomers will receive 2.2 million dollars in benefits? Hardly.I notice that the article does not mention Congress raiding Social Security to fund other projects. No mention of folks collecting Social Security who have never paid into the fund?
There are many professions in America where men work for 40 years doing stressful jobs with irregular hours and often collect just 11 social security & retirement checks and then die. The blue collar, time card punching, hard working Boomers who have paid into the system for decades are not the problem.
How is this even possible? Everyone who has ever had a job ever has paid something into the fund. Unless you work for a public ins ution that doesn't participate, in which case you're not eligible for benefits either.
I will take the word of multiple college professors of economics over random internet guys incredulity. It's not difficult to determine outlays versus revenues. All of the internal accounting like SS slush fund manipulations is besides the point.Fuzzy that article is full of holes written by a person with an ax to grind. Boomers will receive 2.2 million dollars in benefits? Hardly.
There are many professions in America where men work for 40 years doing stressful jobs with irregular hours and often collect just 11 social security & retirement checks and then die. The blue collar, time card punching, hard working Boomers who have paid into the system for decades are not the problem.
We are not talking only direct payouts. It's net transfers. This notion that it only matters if you get directly get a check is absurd.
This reads like a childrens novel. Boomers have racked up tons of debt every since theyve reached their majority. There really is no arguing that even with fluff adjectives like the above. Working hard is not an excuse to live outside your means and then pass on the bill to the next guy.The blue collar, time card punching, hard working Boomers
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