NOTE: I originally started writing this post the week before the elections, but decided not to publish it because I thought it was too dark. I was feeling uninspired yesterday, so I decided to finish this draft in lieu of writing an fresh post. Enjoy.
The sign above is apparently a real sign from a Tea Party rally. I found it over at Breathing Grace, where Terry writes:
I’d like to examine a little more closely the thinking the above graphic indicates since I live in a state where retirees comprise a large portion of the electorate. Their voted is heavily courted. Most of the campaign ads that run, even those for state races that have no bearing on Social Security and Medicare, play on the fears of seniors concerning whether or not their benefits will be cut. Even among the Tea Party set, which is largely populated by confessed Christians, few dare to bring up the fact that Social Security as it stands today is not only unsustainable, but a financial noose around the necks of the children and grandchildren of people who lobby heavily to preserve the status quo. Think about that for just a minute. Our nation is so addicted to entitlements and comfort that we are willing to bankrupt our own children and grandchildren! So much for “the greatest generation.”
This dovetails nicely into something I’ve been meaning to write for a while. Last month, Matt Taibbi, one of a handful of trustworthy journalists in this world, wrote a four-page expose of the Tea Party movement for Rolling Stone in which he described the hoards of anti-government protesters rather uncharitably, to say the least:
…Vast forests have already been sacrificed to the public debate about the Tea Party: what it is, what it means, where it’s going. But after lengthy study of the phenomenon, I’ve concluded that the whole miserable narrative boils down to one stark fact: They’re full of shit. All of them. At the voter level, the Tea Party is a movement that purports to be furious about government spending — only the reality is that the vast majority of its members are former Bush supporters who yawned through two terms of record deficits and spent the past two electoral cycles frothing not about spending but about John Kerry’s medals and Barack Obama’s Sixties associations. The average Tea Partier is sincerely against government spending — with the exception of the money spent on them. In fact, their lack of embarrassment when it comes to collecting government largesse is key to understanding what this movement is all about — and nowhere do we see that dynamic as clearly as here in Kentucky, where Rand Paul is barreling toward the Senate with the aid of conservative icons like Palin.
He goes on to write how Rand Paul opposes eliminating the one government program that enriches him personally:
Early in his campaign, Dr. Paul, the son of the uncompromising libertarian hero Ron Paul, denounced Medicare as “socialized medicine.” But this spring, when confronted with the idea of reducing Medicare payments to doctors like himself — half of his patients are on Medicare — he balked. This candidate, a man ostensibly so against government power in all its forms that he wants to gut the Americans With Disabilities Act and abolish the departments of Education and Energy, was unwilling to reduce his own government compensation, for a very logical reason. “Physicians,” he said, “should be allowed to make a comfortable living.”
The whole thing is worth a read. However, I want to continue down this tack of Tea Partiers opposing government waste save for the money they get. A while back, the New York Times reported on a poll of Tea Partiers that backs up Taibbi’s observations:
When talking about the Tea Party movement, the largest number of respondents said that the movement’s goal should be reducing the size of government, more than cutting the budget deficit or lowering taxes.
And nearly three-quarters of those who favor smaller government said they would prefer it even if it meant spending on domestic programs would be cut.
But in follow-up interviews, Tea Party supporters said they did not want to cut Medicare or Social Security — the biggest domestic programs, suggesting instead a focus on “waste.”
Some defended being on Social Security while fighting big government by saying that since they had paid into the system, they deserved the benefits.
Others could not explain the contradiction.
“That’s a conundrum, isn’t it?” asked Jodine White, 62, of Rocklin, Calif. “I don’t know what to say. Maybe I don’t want smaller government. I guess I want smaller government and my Social Security.” She added, “I didn’t look at it from the perspective of losing things I need. I think I’ve changed my mind.”
The lesser mind will look at the above excerpts and proclaim, “Aha! The Tea Party is a bunch of hypocrites!” And yes, they may be hypocritical, but there’s a method to their madness.
Liberals like to attack the Tea Party as racist, and some on the far right embrace them as an evolving expression of “implicit whiteness” in America, but race is not what defines them. The Tea Party is fighting to transform America into a gerontocracy – a government of the old people, by the old people, and for the old people. More specifically, the old people who will be ruling are the Baby Boomers, the most narcissistic and avaricious generation in American history. The above-mentioned NYT report identifies the demographics of the Tea Party as being primarily old and white:
Tea Party supporters are wealthier and more well-educated than the general public, and are no more or less afraid of falling into a lower socioeconomic class, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll.
The 18 percent of Americans who identify themselves as Tea Party supporters tend to be Republican, white, male, married and older than 45.
The more cynical among you might argue that America is already a gerontocracy, what with the levers of power held by dried-up old prunes like Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid and Mitch McConnell. But just like how having white men in government doesn’t mean that white or male interests are represented, Congress being an old folks’ home doesn’t mean that elderly interests are represented. When then-President Bush proposed privatizing Social Security in 2005, the old farts in this country had a collective anal prolapse.
Ever wonder why Social Security is the third rail of American politics? It’s an obvious scam that is slowly dragging down the economy, but it just happens to benefit the fastest growing and most politically influential voter bloc in this country. Government pension programs by nature are Ponzi schemes because they require an ever-increasing number of suckers citizens paying into the system to stay solvent. This leads into the primary reason why Social Security is in danger – the Baby Boomers didn’t have enough kids to keep the Ponzi scheme going. Unlike their frisky parents, the Boomers preferred to have smaller families of three, two or just one kid, and in some cases none at all. No kids means no taxpayers to keep you from having to eat Alpo when you’re 75 and can’t work because of your bum hip. To make matters worse, Social Security was designed merely to keep seniors out of poverty, not to fund the big, expensive cars and trips to Bermuda that the Boomers are used to.
There are only two ways to save Social Security. The first is to drastically increase the number of workers paying into the system. The government’s preferred way of doing this is with immigration, legal and illegal. The negative effects of legal and illegal immigration have been hashed out so many times in this part of the blogosphere that I don’t need to repeat them. Suffice it to say, importing large numbers of foreigners isn’t an option, either practically or politically. This leaves our other choice – liquidate all parts of the government save for Social Security, Medicare and other programs that benefit seniors.
That is the true purpose of the Tea Party. For all of their anti-government bluster, they’re just another interest group clamoring for their slice of the entitlement pie. They are the final expression of Boomer vanity, narcissism and greed before they skedaddle on up to that spirit in the sky. If you doubt me, find me a Tea Party politician who is even considering talking about cutting Social Security or Medicare. Sharron Angle? Rand Paul? Marco Rubio? Not a chance. They are all part and parcel of the Gray Mafia, who will appropriate all of the ducats to their vampiric constituents while denying you so much as crumbs from the table. The young must die so that the old may live.
And make no mistake, the Baby Boomers are nothing more than a generation of vampires seeking to suck the blood out of their children to prolong their own wretched lives. They’re also a gang of vile hypocrites. After they spent their youths in the sixties and seventies taking every illicit substance known to man, they got Puritan pious and instituted the War on Drugs in the eighties to ass-rape anyone else who did the same. After voting themselves massive entitlement programs in the form of the Great Society, they foisted neoliberal capitalism and “free trade” on America to denude blue-collar work and make getting into tens of thousand of dollars in debt a requirement just to enter the middle class. After dodging the draft during the Vietnam War when they were young enough to die for their country, they conjured up some “Support the Troops” bullshit as a salve to their corrupt souls and to browbeat everyone into becoming sunshine patriots. Every joy they indulged in they seek to deny to the rest of us, every ladder that they used to climb to the top they kicked away. And now that their lives are finally coming to a close and the scam they were hoping to cash in on is about to collapse, they’re scheming to hoard the government’s bullion all for themselves.
Fortunately, being the selfless Samaritan that I am, I’ve devised another, foolproof way to save Social Security from collapse. In fact, seniors can use it themselves! I call it the Elderly Cranial Evacuation Boomstick:
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2) Insert the end of the Boomstick into your mouth, aiming towards your medulla oblongata at the back of your head.
3) Pull the trigger.
WARNING: Don’t use out-of-doors, in public places or anywhere large amounts of people will see you, because you’re gonna leave behind a real mess!
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{ 47 comments… read them below or add one }
My dad has been railing on the baby boomers for decades.
He would always ask this question to make us think: “when the baby boomers retire, who is going to take over their spots?”
We live in a messed up world, gents. Enjoy the decline.
Thanks for the link.
You hit the nail on the head about the boomer generation. The war on drugs, the draft dodging, all of it. Well said.
Your ending is as you indicated, pretty dark for my tastes, but you made your point.
For the record, Marco Rubio was willing to at least say the retirement age has to be raised to 70, and took a brow beating down here for being unwilling to back away from that during a debate. He didn’t go far enough in my opinion, but given the alternatives on the ticket, who else was I gonna vote for?
Five stars Ferdinand. You’re singing my tune.
Real conservatism is dead. The old bourgeoisie idea of actually saving up for retirement and being too ashamed to live on charity is gone. Everyone is a sponge.
The draft dodgers and druggies of the 60s were a small but vocal minority of that generation. It you want to find them, go to a college campus not to a tea party. Any small government proponent who wants to be taken seriously will have to be willing to cut his own entitlement first (see the current earmark debate).
We’re just 45 days away 2011, and Lord knows–if this recession continues, and if more people [males especially] have their jobs taken away and given to a resident of India or China…and if the combined 120 million populace of Gen-X and Millennials cannot pay the already 14-figure debt that the Boomer leaders have created from the last war…then there will be some serious bloodshed!
Already, the action of ‘take, take, take’ is their number one priority!
Beautiful piece, Ferdinand.
EmanTheDesperateHouseboy
Aren’t you the same guy who wrote a post about how his government job affects the way he votes? Do you see your own hypocrisy here?
[In a world in which everyone is out to screw you over, your only option is to care about yourself first. - ed.]
SS was never meant to be what it is today and in my opinion part of the reason why seniors are so dependent on it in our modern society is due to the breakdown of the family, where younger generations used to take care of their elderly parents once they could no longer care for themselves. You generalize all over the place here, for every self-indulgent baby-boomer, there is a hard-working one that had the foresight to plan for his/her retirement on their own. My grandfather and my father both worked the dogs their whole lives just so they would be able to take care of themselves towards the end. The issue here is personal responsibility, and that is quickly degrading with each passing generation.
[Those who live in glass houses should not lob boulders.]
The whole platform of the Obama regime was to glorify the youth population to the point where they were saying, “fuck grandma, pull the life support, I want free healthcare”. So if it were ever a question of who was more entitlement driven, the boomers or their children, I would have to say emphatically that it is in fact their children who want the most for the least input.
[Don't tell me you believe that "death panels" bullshit.]
I am a tea party member, or tea bagger, or whatever the hell the leftist twats want to call it. I think we need to drastically cut the scope of the federal government, including education (which would put me out of job, oh well), welfare (which I haven’t heard one damn word about, how about not shelling out money for each greasy welfare kid that gets popped out as if the mother were a slot machine at Ceasars), SS needs to be abolished by 2030 (there is nothing left anyways, and the money that even those “old farts” get each month is so infinitismal, it wouldn’t matter anyway, it’s merely a sacred political cow at this point, medicare- well our vets need care that’s for damn sure, and again there is just nothing left, although I would think that with all of the money being pumped into the private sector by slashing and burning the federal government, there would be some amount of money left over to help the most dire elderly cases (you know the people who don’t deserve to be told, ‘ok step out onto the iceburg’).
[Hooray! You're principled. Now try convincing the millions of other leeches who are protesting with you.]
I mean think about your mom Ferdinand, at some point she will be old, she will need care, are you willing to step up and help her as she did when she raised you, fed you, and probably wiped your ass at some point? Or will you just hand her a gun and tell her to blow her brains out?
[Filial piety died with Rebel Without a Cause.]
See it’s not so cut and dry, and the Nanny State is never really going to go away, and again I think it’s more reflective of how fucked up and unempathetic we have become as individuals more than anything else. We let Big Brother replace the family.
There is the third option of cutting individual social security benefits to survival levels (the idea of government paying for luxury holidays is insanity). But who’s going to vote for that?
In general terms, “Yes”. But…
That “Great Society” largess wasn’t birthed by the “Boomers.” Last time I looked, back in 1965 L.B.J. and all his co-enablers who shoved that garbage through were part of that “Greatest Generation.” Since the age of demarcation delineating the advent of the Boomer’s was 1946, that would make the first-born of them a mere 19 when the socialist vanguard birthed during the reign of F.D.R. proposed and passed the legislation that was named “The War on Poverty.”
The next “War on Whatever” that was referred to in the article was the “War on Drugs”, in fact and as argued done during the early 1980′s. Was that Bill Clinton or Ronald Regan and “Just say no” Nancy who decided to issue the call to arms? Why it was members of the “Greatest Generation” who did, even though there is little doubt that Boomer-Boy Clinton and his multi-generational cronies Bush and North were making big money off the “Cocaine for Weapons” deal known as “Iran-Contra” while the forces were being assembled for this failed, rights-stripping battle now spilling across our southern border. And, may I be so bold as to ask, how many “Boomers” were seated in the House and Senate when this anti-drug legislation was passed? I argue with confident assurance that the number was but few.
Remember the bumper sticker that showed up on all those giant R.V.’s back in about 1985 or so? The one that read, “I’m spending my children’s inheritance” while they wallowed down the road right after Reagan killed spending on alternative energy? Yes, when that bumper sticker hit the road the oldest “Boomer” was about 29 years old. What we had at that point was the “Greatest Generation” engaging in the greatest transfer of wealth in the history of the world, and for the first time in history, the transfer was going to the haves from the have not’s – from the young to the old. Now, this perverse “social contract” is so institutionalized that this theft has become a right to both the “right” and the “left.”
Ah, yes. those “Boomers” and their lack of reproduction. One child or perhaps two, nicely set upon the fireplace mantle for all to see. The children there just to show the world that “we” were “normal.” “Aren’t they lovely?” say’s Mommy as little Jack and Kate both suffer from attachment disorder, binge drinking, delinquency and whoredom resulting from being dumped off at daycare while mommy established her maybe thrice-married, multiple affair independence in the pursuit of her career and self-fulfillment. Latchkey kids, all.
But is this particular phenomenon solely to be blamed upon the “Boomers?”
Of course not. This didn’t happen in a vacuum, and only a fool would think so. What occurred was programmed behavior taught to the Boomers by a public school system run by the “Greatest Generation.” Taught to the white females (“Weaker vessels” as God would call them) in particular, the world was polluted and overpopulated and that the pursuit of a career with minimal offspring was the moral and ethical path to go. It was a “Burn those bra’s” but put them on for your place in the workplace all at the same time. Insert the “Greatest Generations” little “War on Poverty” paying the minorities monthly checks based on the number of kids produced out of wedlock(Sorry Desperate Houseboy, man – you have a great site!), we grew an ever-expanding dependent underclass at the same time these selfish but believed to be selfless white women refused to reproduce due to mal-education and through completely idiotic policies.
And those policies and social prescriptions came from where? The “Greatest Generation.”
“Don’t give me no hand me down clothes” and “American woman, get away from me. Go. Get away, now go, go, go.”
Guess Who. Yeah.
So my “Greatest Generation” mother, a woman who has lived an adult life that could well be argued as luxurious, told me a few years back that my grandmother being on Social Security for forty years as well as receiving funds for “Assisted Living” from the hapless taxpayer gave my dear mother and father “their freedom.” Yes, a life-long member of the G.O.P., one of those stalwart “Tenth Amendment” defenders perversely arguing that the government stealing from others for the benefit of my grandmother gave my parents their “freedom” as a side benefit.
“Freedom from responsibility” is what I thought. You loved watching “The Waltons”, but you will be damned if your own aged mother will live in your home and interfere with your “freedom.” Answer? Soak me and mine for your “freedom” as we struggle to move forwards and raise our own children, all four of them.
It’s programmed selfishness, sort of like “hand me downs” from one generation to the next. Now Humpty Dumpty lies at the bottom of the wall and no one knows what to do. All I know is that the lot of us “are spending our childrens inheritance.”
[And which generation VOTED for the politicians who instituted all of these atrocities? Eh? Eh? - ed.]
Translation for most of the comments:
“So? Fuck you Ferd, I’m fighting for MY share of the Goveverment money and everybody else can go fuck themselves”
Havig to work for your stuff is so passe. We are beyond that now.
Good comments today. As always, it comes down to Kto-Kgo (who-whom). Everyone wants everyone else’s ox to be gored. From a nation of liberty-lovers to a nation of lotus eaters. The late, great, fictional “American people” have been replaced by a bunch of we-are-the-world leaches. God rot them all.
The two G’s of doom : Gynocracy and Gerontocracy
So now I hate old people too.
A friend of mine and I recently discussed using a cleansing gun in order to rid the world of such problems although we soon discovered we were talking about genocide and getting a little too close to a Hitler like discussion that we figured best to avoid. I prefer the Elderly Cranial Evacuation Boomstick as you promote the problem demographics to use it themselves. As always a great read.
See it’s not so cut and dry, and the Nanny State is never really going to go away, and again I think it’s more reflective of how fucked up and unempathetic we have become as individuals more than anything else. We let Big Brother replace the family.
*******************
And whose fault is the destruction of the family on a national scale?
Feminist culture
And who promoted feminist culture into the mainstream at all levels of government:
The Baby Boomer Generation
Thanks for nothing you fucking hippies.
Globalization = Baby boomers are in deep shit by 2020.
Why? Because all the young people are in other countries, and cannot be taxed to pay for Western oldies. India has 450 million people born after 1990. Why will they pay for 75 million US boomers?
Also, the oldest boomers will end up screwing the youngest boomers, due to the 18-year gap in their ages. Old boomers are already retiring, while young boomers are in their peak taxpaying years. Look for inter-boomer conflict.
People born after 1990 will be relatively unaffected by boomer pressure to tax younger people, as boomers will be mostly dead by the time these people reach peak tax-paying years (ages 35+).
Ferds,
Gerontocracy IS feminism!!!
Why? Because women live 7 years longer than men.
Therefore, among people aged 75 and older, women outnumber men 2 to 1.
The ranks of the 75+ are heavily, heavily dominated by old women, not men.
Intellectual consistency and honesty is not unique to some TEA Party members.
How many liberals pay the least taxes possible, do not willingly live next to ‘diversity’ especially if wealthy, agitate for more environmental taxes and laws but don’t live it? I could find other examples, but you get the point.
I to would like to know how SOME TEA Party members want less government and taxes but see no need to close out of these asinine military adventures and shutdown overseas bases.
I’m a state employee that would like to see government reduced a lot, but I’m here to make the system work for me as it is now.
I had proposed a similar solution in the past.
–
http://dissention.wordpress.com/2010/07/13/a-view-of-the-future-july-13-2010/
Geez Ferd,
In my piece above I basically agreed with your arguments and threw in a few caveats which you did not question because they happen to be true. But you come back with “And which generation VOTED for the politicians who instituted all of these atrocities? Eh? Eh?”
Well, like, um, bummer man. Those candidates are what the political machine put before us, except for the one time I was really drunk on election day and decided to do the right thing and vote for the “Prohibition Party” candidate instead of Bush I back in ’88 in out of pure spite.
So based on your critique of my comments, what candidates and policies have the following generations voted for that gives them a clean slate?
Damn! The same ones that “The Establishment” that controls both parties puts before them, just like the Boomers did. “All men are sinners.”
[The people make "the Establishment" possible. We are rotting from the head AND tail. - ed.]
The thing is the monetary and tax system supports making people rely on medicare and Social Security. In effect Social Security and Medicare take a little over 15% of your wages. With the FED system of monetary policy your money will not hold value over time. So to retire you must invest in something and hope for a good rate of return. The average worker after income, SS and medicare taxes is not going to have a lot of money left over to invest. So at most they stick a few thousand bucks in the bank which pays crap interest. By the time they hit 65 they damn well want something for that 15% they were taxed all these years.
The only way out is to try to do away with all these programs, which is impossible. When you invest with Bernie Maddoff you hope you just get your money back and the other sucker ends up holding the empty bag.
Death Panels are in fact real. The IRS will decide under ObamaCare which treatments it will pay for, and which it will not. That is in fact a death panel, in all but name. “Bending the Cost Curve” as Mickey Kaus noted, was a major push for ObamaCare, and Seniors who paid into it all their lives don’t like the idea.
Please tell me, why should someone who paid into Medicare all their life, be denied treatment so illegal aliens can get more?
[Without the young workers paying taxes, Medicare and other wealth redistribution programs could not function. They need us, we don't need them. We could kill everyone over the age of 65 and the economy would not be hurt in the slightest. - ed.]
Whats in it for them?
[Turn the question around. Why should I, a working, healthy citizen, have to pay taxes for a bunch of mean old farts who sit on their asses all day and watch Wheel of Fortune? Why should I support a bunch of freeloaders? What's in it for ME?]
You complain about a geronontcracy, but the younger folks are illegal aliens and their kids.
[And WHO let those aliens in? Who was it that voted for the politicians that decided to turn America into a racial salad bowl? Wasn't me.]
Not Whites, why should older Whites care about a bunch of foreigners?
[So I'm a non-white illegal alien now?]
You are not asking for older folks to sacrifice for their grand-kids. You are asking them to sacrifice for Mexico’s Grandkids.
[I'm not asking them to do anything. I'm just saying that their "anti-government" cant is completely hollow. They made their bed, now they can lie in it.]
Older Whites response is entirely reasonable. It is not any different in fact from your own.
[Except I'm not the one who fired the first shot. Nor am I actively seeking to screw over a group of people whose money I need to survive.]
Further, Social Security has been raided since the 1970′s (and never been paid back) to fund other programs: Ag support, aid to illegals, welfare expansion, etc. that goes to either corporate bottom lines (Archer Daniels Midland, Bunge, Cargill, and Dreyfuss mostly) or non-Whites who detest the White seniors. Social Security would be entirely funded if it were not raided constantly (Al Gore’s “lockbox” etc.) Gore was and is a putz, but he had a point.
All politics at its core is spoils. Who gets what from whom. Since Whites will be screwed over by non-Whites, it is entirely consistent for them to want money spent on them and not a bunch of foreigners or Blacks who hate them.
Eliminate agricultural particularly ethanol subsidies, currently flowing to exports to Europe and the Middle East. Eliminate the Depts of Energy and Education, which do more harm than good. End a lot of welfare spending, and SWPL make-work stuff like grants to study the sex lives of gay men in Argentina. Spend on Military (employs lots of nerdy White engineers) and SS and Medicare (keeps covenant with the White taxypayers who paid into it and those who expect their current tax payments to carry them). Deport every Mexican (lower welfare/ed spending costs) and use tariffs to encourage local manufacturing ala Germany to raise workforce efficiency and productivity and wages. Trade masses of workers for fewer making more and creating valuable exports.
Problem of SS financial stability solved.
@Whiskey
Your hatred of non-whites has clouded your perception of reality. The welfare system is used by American born English-speaking poor. The vast majority of this unproductive group are American-born single mothers of either trailer trash white heritage or ghetto black heritage.
Most immigrants coming from Mexico and elsewhere are here to work, and to send what little they earn here back home to their families. Unlike the entitlement attitude of your trailer park sisters and American-born ghetto blacks, most immigrants carry a sense of pride in the strong work ethic they practice and the deep bonds of love they have for their extended family back home.
Third world citizens might be poor, but they have something you and your white nationalists don’t have; heart-felt extended families, strong work ethic and a moral compass.
@ John
Well, like, um, bummer man. Those candidates are what the political machine put before us
For democracy to work good people have got to step up to the plate. Just sitting there and waiting for “what’s on offer” means that you’re passive in the political process. The one thing I admire the in the Left is it’s ability to find people who will step up to the plate. The majority of the Right-o-sphere are comprised of family guys who are more concerned with their own well being than the well being of the country and are happy to wait along till someone comes around that they can support. Meanwhile the rot continues. Note that in the U.S it is not as bad as in the Australia and the U.K.
The good thing about the “Tea Party” movement is that it as attempt by the rank and file to get politically involved. The bad thing is that the “Right Culture” from which it arose is nothing like Right Culture was 100 years ago. It’s still a right version of the “Me” generation. Pushing things back to the “Reagan years” will not help. It’s back to 1900 or bust.
Example:
By the time they hit 65 they damn well want something for that 15% they were taxed all these years.
When did it become a right to retire at 65? Their was a good body of Christian tradition that taught that a man had to pull his weight till he no longer could. Prior to 1900 you worked till you could then family looked after you. Relying on the kindness of strangers, i.e friends, church and state was seen as a last resort.
Lot’s of Righties don’t even see how emeshed they are in the Matrix.
Lot’s of half-intelligent people have seen that Social Security was going to collapse for years. This poor bastard has been beating the drum for years. No one, right or left listened. More importantly no one wanted to listen. People from the right and left had their collective heads up their arses hoping that “big magic” would come around and make the problems go away.
@Whiskey
Please tell me, why should someone who paid into Medicare all their life, be denied treatment so illegal aliens can get more? Whats in it for them?
Define “denied treatment”.
Does a 95 year old have a “right” to bypass surgery on the public purse? Or does a fat diabetic (he can lose weight) have a “right” to subsidised medications? Their are quite good rational reasons for restricting access to certain treatments. Even if you took away all the illegals you would still have a system that would eventually collapse, because the system, as designed, has no negative feedback mechanism. Any attempt to put a restraining mechanism on the system is political suicide. The proles want perpetual access to the trough.
“Matt Taibbi, one of a handful of trustworthy journalists in this world, wrote a four-page expose of the Tea Party movement for Rolling Stone”
Complimenting Matt Taibbi? and the Rolling Stones? If I wanted to read left wing faggotry I would go to DailyKos.
[It's always about the faggotry with you corporatist butt pirates. - ed.]
This is the shittiest entry on “in mala fide”
[Just keep munching that ass, boy. Maybe some day your masters will pay you for it.]
I knew the Boomers were going to hell and dragging all of us down with them:
“Boomer Death Watch”
http://www.rickmcginnis.com/boomer/
Lots of Boomer “Me!” quotes.
I bet as all the Boomers retire, there will be a lot of “respect the elderly” noise.
Slumlord,
I’ve been beating this drum for the last twenty five years as well, and to the point I ended up on 50,000 watt radio stations in the late eighties advocating a slow death to the Social Security system by having the youth (at that point it was 1988) able to “drop out” entirely, make it optional for the oldest of the “Boomers”, and the entirety of the system “MEANS TESTED!” I’m now in my mid-fifties and I argued than as I will argue now – If you do not need it based on actual means testing, you should not get it. Period.
I do not care how much someone paid in. It’s a welfare system, and the average recipient gets out every dime they ever put in in a mere 3.8 years. After that, every cent received is welfare. Means test the damn thing and drive a stake through its heart.
Further, I couldn’t agree with you more when you argued that going back to the “Reagan era” is a damn joke. The faux conservatives and their fawning worship of that clown make me sick. Let’s see – astronomical budget deficits, amnesty for illegal aliens, Iran-Contra, you name it. That’s “conservatism”? Gimme a break!
And it was “Teflon Ron” who brought the country “NO FAULT DIVORCE” when he was the governor of California in 1969. To hell with him.
Yes, 1900 might be a good place to start over. We’re headed there anyway, so we had best learn to hitch up the wagons and dust off the forgotten skills of our forebearers – the one’s who preceeded the “Greatest Generation!” And this time, “We won’t get fooled again!”
@Ferdinand-
So you do admit the hypocrisy then? You are asking to keep the very system you decry, as are the old people who would like to live out their golden years not eating alpo.
[I'm not asking for anything. All I'm saying is that I'm out for myself, and that the people who are trying to screw me over need me more than I need them. If they can't comprehend this, it's their loss. - ed.]
Honestly I am old school, when the time comes for my mom and dad to need my help, I will be there for them, even if it means sacrificing some level of comfort for myself. This is why we are in this predicament, people are selfish fucking assholes who don’t care if mom or dad rots away in some substandard apartment without proper medical care.
[Or maybe mom and dad were abusive jerks when their kids were kids and now they're getting their just desserts.]
Society has killed the individual, and along with it character, that’s what it boils down to. Collectivism is actually probably the most selfish ideology out of the lot when you really get down to the esoteric brass tacks.
Well what else would you call deciding who you have to ration healthcare to? Deathpanel is merely a symbolic term for deciding who gets left out of the entitlement goodies.
[Tell that to Michele Bachmann.]
Will it be the young people who will continue to be the democratic voting block for years to come or the people who are going to leave the world and with them their hand to fill in (D) on the ballot.
[Maybe if they weren't struggling under the weight of taxes, student loans, and the cost of living - all foisted on them by their predecessors, I might add - they wouldn't be so pissed off at the oldsters who are robbing them blind.]
I am part of Generation Gimmie, and it sounds as though you are too. If you can’t look around and see just how truly entitlement driven the 18-35 demographic is, well then I guess you are not as perceptive as you think you are. Why is there such disdain for the people that have been described as the “Greatest Generation”?
[I'm carrying tens of thousands of dollars of debt for a worthless degree that I needed to get a job that didn't involve bagging groceries. I've got rent, car payments, and taxes on top of that. These rich old fogies want to eliminate the few ways I DO benefit from the government, and you're wondering WHY I have "disdain" for them?]
Trust me, none of the elderly people or the baby boomers at any of these tea parties are living high on the hog or expecting some extravagent hand-out from the government– they just don’t see how a system that they have paid into for years will never benefit them.
[Then they're retards who don't have a basic grasp of economics. The Medicare and Social Security they so cherish is made possible by their children and grandchildren working and paying into the system for them. They want to keep pissing off the people they need to stay alive with their little scams, they're going to reap the consequences.]
My dad has said to me ever since I was a kid, the minute you make enough money where you have some extra income coming in, you start socking it away, because there will be nothing left of SS by the time you are retired.
["Retirement"? HAHAHAHAHAHA. Everyone in my peer group, including myself, will die before they get to "retire".]
I see more of his kind at these functions than the kind you speak of. You want to villify everyone. The tea party crowd may be simple, but inherently I do think they are principled people, and most would be willing to sacrifice whatever shit money they got from SS for the good of our country.
[Well, since they're richer than me, they can set an example by pledging to give up their government guaranteed goodies. Somehow, I doubt they'll follow through.]
Btw- There is a cold place in hell for those who abandon the very people that made sacrifices for the little pukes they brought into this world. Having read some of your other posts, I would say you were not a member of the latchkey kid club, treat mom and dad right when the time comes.
[My parents will be fine. Everyone else's can get a job.]
Why in God’s name would you use that glossy toilet paper of a magazine “Rolling Stone” to make a point? Using that rag as a legitamite argument against the tea party is like asking Hitler “tell me the real truth about the Jews”.
[Because Matt Taibbi rocks. - ed.]
OK, let’s point the generational finger of blame where it belongs. “John” wants to blame the “greatest,” (man I hate that term for that bunch of arsonist, big-government-loving fools) Ferd and others the Boomers. No one has laid the blame where it belongs: on the shoulders of the “Silent” generation. I use the timeline of the book “The Fourth Turning,” which seems to have influenced a few other posters.
The Silent were born from 1926 to 1942. They had a serious case of “Greatest envy” as they were too young to take part in the triumphalist smashing of Nazi Germany, and the unquestioned incineration of millions of civilians. They were too old to be libertine like the boomers. The Silents were the ones who passed Medicare to succor/patronize the Greatest, and also the ones who passed no-fault to maybe sorta dump their aged wives and SWING! They were the most over-protected generation as children, and were universally known as “good.” The phrase from the book is that they were the only generation where the college-educated outbred the undereducated.
Since they were overprotected as children, they did not value childhood protection, and so their children were wildly underprotected, the X-ers from 1961 to 1981. That worked out REAL well.
The Silents will pay no net taxes as a group. They deserve your scorn.
All of the generations suck.
The “greatest generation” created feminism, the New Deal, and the Great Society welfare state that has literally destroyed black America almost overnight and created an entitlement mentality in the broader culture that is now coming home to roost big-time. And they raised their children to be the greatest load of self-absorbed snots the world has ever seen.
Those children, the Boomers, upon reaching adulthood, immediately set about dismantling the virtual entirety of what had been Western culture — because it was “cool” to do so, and fun to feel righteous and rebellious. The damage done to our cultures in the West has turned out to be irreparable, and the sickness they unleashed, terminal. But they weren’t finished. No. When they “grew up” they started to aggressively loot the country, whether as investment bankers, or government employees, or beta-cum-yuppie, the BBs in their 35-50 phase shifted their narcissism away from cultural armageddon to simply lining their pockets.
After them, Gen X are probably the most responsible generation in a while, but are deathly cynical, disengaged, and in the world for themselves. They observed their parents cynicism (ranging from some late Greatest Generations to earlier BBs) and copied it, relentlessly pursuing their own agenda, regardless.
And even later, we have the self-esteem ridden Ys and the later ones with catchy names — clearly the most self-important, puffed-up, entitled generation of jackasses the world has ever known. Think: Baby Boomers without even a trace of the (perhaps faux) idealism that the Boomers had in their youth, and you have these guys. Louts, PUAs, posers, slackers, hipsters, moochers, entitled motherfuckers and so on. A lost generation, probably the icing on the cake of all of the ones that have come before them.
The bill is going to be stuck with this last lot, which is unfortunate. If there were justice in the world, we’d be actively setting up death panels for the GGs and BBs — they more than deserve it.
Jordan said…
Most immigrants coming from Mexico and elsewhere are here to work, and to send what little they earn here back home to their families. Unlike the entitlement attitude of your trailer park sisters and American-born ghetto blacks, most immigrants carry a sense of pride in the strong work ethic they practice and the deep bonds of love they have for their extended family back home.
Third world citizens might be poor, but they have something you and your white nationalists don’t have; heart-felt extended families, strong work ethic and a moral compass.
That’s largely true for first-generation immigrants from Latin America. But by the second- and third-generation, they have happily settled into the entitled, parasitic mode of ghetto blacks and trailer trash.
Since only about 30% of Social Security goes to retirees, and about 70% is used for various Federal welfare programs, why the constant bashing of old white people?
Go to any Social Security office and you will see that it is loaded with young minorities of various kinds signing up for benefits.
By what metric? Certainly not hours worked, so what metric?
Oh and another thing, it’s nice to speak so lovingly of “the family”.
Do you know what it really means, punks, to have to rely on your children to take care of you when you get older?
It means, “This is MY HOUSE and I’ll do whatever I WANT to you ANIMAL.” may not, how should I put this nicely? Be a safe thing to say to your child-animal. Laying down the rules, being tough but not fair….
well, it might be repaid. In full. I know, I know, that would be MEAN. And I’m sure we can all think of some reasons why it would be wrong to do. But let’s admit it, the child-animals are pure evil.
Novaseeker is right; all the generations suck. Gen X and Y have a lot of antipathy toward the Boomers because 1) they have been insufferably smug about their own perceived awesomeness and 2) they got a better deal, the deal we know and have always known we won’t get. My parents, who were born during the war, lived good and decent, hardworking lives and saved for retirement. I want them to have peace and happiness in their later years, but it does not escape me that they got to retire and early, both of them. On pensions. With great healthcare.
We should all get used to the contraction of the standard of living which will be coming, if not continuously, in waves. At some point, if your Boomer parents live long enough, they will probably live with you and this will not be fun. But the old way – the 1900 way – wasn’t fun either. My grandmother insisted on not living with her children because she remembered her own grandmother living with her family when she was a kid. My great-great-grandmother was an old witch who didn’t like children but had to live with her son because she had pissed away the inheritance she’d gotten from her first husband on her second husband and her spoiled younger kids. My great-grandfather was one of the older kids who hadn’t been sent to school with inheritance money, hadn’t gotten a piece of the farm, and was stuck taking care of his hard-to-please mother for life. Whoopee! They all lived in a one- or possibly two-bedroom shack: two parents, four kids, one horrible old lady and eked out a life from a small farm.
I have my feelings about the Boomers, but I’m sure Gen X would have done the same had they been born twenty or twenty-five years earlier. It’s pretty standard operating procedure for humans to grab what they can get. The Boomers just had more to grab. A lot more. And they don’t want to let go.
Gather ye rosebuds while ye may. It’s only going to get worse.
Oh, and be nice to your kids. I might not help, but it can’t hurt.
Only two ways to save social security?
How about a baby boom now? It’s late, but is it too late? We start seeing the effects in a few years.
I don’t know why people don’t think of this. Such a pleasant way out of the current mess.
Of course, SS will remain a ponzi scheme and if we’re smart we would phase it out anyway. But that’s a lot more humane way of doing it.
What, no comment from Ray Sawhill yet?
Ferdinand, Here’s how I see it:
- There’s both an inter-generational fight and an inter-racial fight for tax money.
- If the old folks get their benefits cut (and it has to happen eventually) then the money will be used for poor blacks and browns, not to lower your taxes. Your taxes will go up further.
- Anyone younger than an old baby boomer is on the side of the shaftees. It isn’t just the twenty somethings who will get screwed. If you are under 55 you will pay far more in taxes than you’ll get back in old age retirement benefits.
- For higher income people who pay large amounts in taxes the switch to shaftee happens at much earlier birth dates.
- For lowest income people they are shafters rather than shaftees for just about all their lives. They get more in benefits than they pay in taxes for most of their lives.
- Since immigration has reduced the earnings capacity of younger generations a growing proportion of them are net recipients rather than tax payers. So this makes Social Security and Medicare even less sustainable.
- As bad as the Laurence Kotlikoff, David Walker, and similar analysts say the US national finances are the reality is far worse. Peak Oil is going to cause a huge reduction in tax revenue and benefits cuts will be savage.
We are still in the tail end of an era where people can delude themselves into thinking that Business As Usual can continue. But the reality of the unsustainability of BAU is going to reach general awareness in the next 5 years and even more so in the 10 years after that. 2020 will be a very bad year.
Social Security retirement programs are absolutely sustainable. It’s a complete con job that they aren’t. It’s the rate of health care cost increase in Medicare/Medicaid/Veterans that is not sustainble. Basically, if you can fix the health programs then the deficit situation looks OK, if not then it doesn’t, regardless of what happens with SS.
Also, SS is not a ponzi scheme. Like a Ponzi scheme, intergenerational transfer programms like SS (or private savings) depend on having new entrants to pay off the old contributors. However, unlike a Ponzi scheme, the intergenerational transfer program can always have new entrants, it need not collapse. Each new generation pays for the one before, and the proccess can continue until civilization collapses. It also helps to understand that unless you save by burying food and water in your back yard, *any* retirement savings — including private savings — are an intergenerational transfer like SS. When you’re retired and withdraw savings, that currency is only paid to you by drawing on the product of the current working generation, who are making the food the retired you eats. Under any system, the standard of living of the elderly is always determined by the ability and willingness of the currently working to support them. Long-term savings are only ever possible because people keep intergenerational promises.
We will have enough money to support SS retirement when the boomers retire. SS is in the best financial shape of any Federal program, actually. If you didn’t change a thing you’d be solvent through 2037, then could pay 75 percent of promised benefits (a higher absolute level than current benefits). Relatively minor changes bring you up to all of promised benefits. But we will probably not have enough money to support SS plus a defense budget five to ten times that of any other country plus a health care system twice as expensive as any other advanced country plus one of the world’s most expensive education systems all on one of the lowest tax burdens in the industrialized world. The question is which you want to cut. Given that SS is one of the least generous retirement programs of any advanced country, and all those other areas are massively more expensive and wasteful than any other advanced country, I think we should look over there first. There has been a massively successful propaganda campaign to smear SS because people want to raid the trust funds for some other budget priority they have.
The baby boom generation did not have it easy. We have had our paychecks looted all our lives to pay Social Security for the GI generation. The older generations dumped the whole of black desegregation in our laps. We didn’t bring blacks here. We didn’t do Jim Crow. But we had to pay the butchers bill for civil rights. As soon as we came of age and began to enter the workforce in 1965, the older generation just happened to start up a war in Asia to kill us all. We were losing 200 to 300 dead a week ! And this went on for years. Pretty much, the parents sat back and let it happen. An equal number were badly maimed and turned into vegetables and left to die in VA hospitals. You never hear of these men.
I could go on and on. So whatever you think of the boomers, we were the most crapped on group in the USA. I don’t think much of this country. I wish that an uncle had taken me aside and told me the truth. I think if I had gone back to the old country, maybe I would have had a better life.
Has any politician floated the idea of raising the retirement age [i]only for women[/i]?
Someone should, even if it means falling one one’s sword and getting voted out of office. It’s the right thing to do, and anyone born after the rise of feminism can see that.
My comments here are generally snarky, but will be earnest for once: Rather than fueling inter-generational conflicts, why not look for solutions to the Socialist (in) Security mess that have something in them for all interested parties (old, young, employees, employers)?
Attention The Right: Why not steal the idea in my post Buying Ourselves Back: A Libertarian-Conservative Solution for Social Security, which has an idea for how economic liberty (as well as growth, labor demand and the associated wages) can be increased, while fixing the entitlements system and ensuring that various stakeholders (including both workers and retirees) get _more_ $ than under the current system.
Escapist: It’s an interesting idea. It’ll never happen, though.
The Social Security implied “contract” is not just between individuals, but between individuals and their government. There’s nothing in your proposal for the government except the headache of administering the transactions between the fat kids and the skinny kids.
I love thinking outside the box, though. Even if yours isn’t do-able, something resembling it might be.
It’s very thought-provoking, anyway.
” liquidate all parts of the government save for Social Security, Medicare and other programs that benefit seniors.”
Sounds like a plan! If this is what they are for (well maybe not quite liquidate) then I’m with them! There’s plenty of fat we could cut which would be better used for supporting our grandparents – half the military budget or the hundreds of billions we spend in a vain attempt to make “diversity” work, for example. The West isn’t dying because of a generation (who, BTW, were far more fiscally conservative than the younger generation they’re allegedly victimizing), it’s dying because of a political movement, specifically leftism and its belief in multiculturalism and one-worldism. Anyone who promotes minor considerations like intergenerational conflict is objectively helping the traitors.
Escapist,
Your proposal of selling the right to opt out of Social Security and Medicare won’t work because young people won’t have enough money to put up to pay for the opt-out right (excepting a small number of successful Silicon Valley start-up participants and a few people born wealthy). The amount they’d have to put up to make it worth it for a 65 year old to sell that right (in exchange for the 65 year old giving up on his own Medicare and Social Security benefits) would need to run into the hundreds of thousands of dollars. A 21 year old is going to get that money how? Even a 25 year old? Not workable on any significant scale.
So your proposal will not work.
@Atticus: Thanks. We could work in some gimmes for bureacrats, that’s a detail/compromise of the political process
@George Orwell: did you actually read the post with ideas for financing? I acknowledged that point and addressed it by specifically introducing the idea of buyouts being financed by corporations, in exchange for removal of the corporate income tax/payroll tax _in perpetuity_.
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