Let’s call them what they really are: the Cash-Out Generation. Over a century of prior generations invested forward, only to have this single generation cash it all in (and take highly leveraged loans for future generations to pay, when the cash wasn’t enough).
Excess wages ($85K/year for a Packard auto plant employee to shuttle parts around on a cart). Early retirement. Guaranteed pension payouts that no private investor could match. Public sector perks like nice parks, roads and environmental “feel good” rules that were funded by loans, not their own tax payments. Social security demands unmatched by their payments. Even their children’s education was something they shortchanged, demanding loans pay what they wouldn’t.
They’re the narcissistic parasites who cashed it all in. The hell with this Boomer mandate that social security be treated as an untouchable third rail. Given the demographic data on boomer wealth, it’s time to match social security payments to actuarial models based on actual payments in, without interest (remember Boomers, you’ve rejected the opportunity to have such funds invested and earning interest).
It’s either that or we’re going to cut the funding to the senior centers and let the Boomers experience accountability in their last years.
Read the original post and other comments as well.
I get by on 25K/yr.
and I have my own home. you have to spend lots of retirement hours scouring kijiji and such.
I’d suggest that the Greatest Generation also played a role in this. Postwar most voted for extending the state’s power perhaps in the mistaken belief that because Government had won the war, it could fix other big problems too.
This tirade against frugality and paying into the system is so stupid it does not rate a reply. That lucky Packard employee. Wish I could have had a job like that. I had to save, live within my means and buy only the things I could afford. Have paid into the Canada pension plan since day one and if I’m lucky I could see all of 1500 a month when I retire. But I will be debt free because my mortgage as well as all other debts will have a zero balance. Yes I’m part of the boomer generation. The generation that allows you to sit on your lazy ass collecting welfare through the excessive taxes taken off me. Don’t know who pissed in your cornflakes but I doubt if you paid for them anyway.
Better yet, move out of your “boomer” parents basement and get a job.
You sound a lot like me. 😉
“(remember Boomers, you’ve rejected the opportunity to have such funds invested and earning interest).”
It’s a good thing they didn’t invest, with the chances that it would have been invested in CDO’s CDS’s and all the other proprietary toxic derivative garbage of the too big to fails. A double bailout would have been required for that one but I think it’s obvious who would get preferential treatment. The argument is a plea to hand over more governmental financial control to finance capital. I think we know quite well how successful the private Fed has been in their ability stave off financial disaster let alone any of the other ‘trusted’ names of Wall Street.
Boomers with their successors will be lucky to get an injection, instead of a bullet in old age.
After all this is the generation that championed, abortion, Euthanasia, assisted suicide, pull the plug on anyone not useful. The quality of life generation. You dug your own graves, because you never thought you would grow old. Now the piper demands his due.
The culture of death you created comes for you!
Cue Charles Heston and Soylnet Green – HOME.
@ Revnant Dream
Not sure what your problem is but I’ll bet it’s hard to pronounce.
“The first Packard automobiles were produced in 1899, and the last in 1958.”
85k isn’t bad pay for a greedy ten year old kid.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Packard
If you want the standard of living to continue to climb, you must let the economy function properly. That means that all prices and wages must be determined by the free market — that is, the free judgments of every individual. No more “entitlements” through legislation. Otherwise you run the risk of eating away at your capital, with disastrous results. A society cannot consume more than it produces for any length of time.
Everything that one consumes must be produced first. All economic progress derives from those who use their minds to produce more or better or cheaper goods and services. Economic progress can only be guaranteed in a laissez-faire free market.
The vast numbers of unproductive regulatory positions within government MUST come to an end. The free market cannot be improved on because it is based on the free judgments of individuals as to what is valuable to them. The only necessary function of government in this context is to prevent fraud in the marketplace.
Also, the handouts of government money to to “activist groups” and other malcontents MUST come to an end.
Add to these the streamlining of the tax system to eliminate the myriad complexities, and we have the beginnings of the solution.
What a line of bullshit!
My dad worked on a Packard assembly line back in 1958 and a majority of the union employees made less than 10 dollars an hour.
Are You sure this lame ass is not posting from a tent city?
I’d suggest that the Greatest Generation also played a role in this. Postwar most voted for extending the state’s power perhaps in the mistaken belief that because Government had won the war, it could fix other big problems too.
Posted by: andycanuck at November 14, 2011 11:52 PM
Yup. Around here there were even some WWII veterans who, along with their wives and silly kids, voted for Trudeau . Unbelievable.
peterj
Cute, but what did I say thats untrue? It has a name all right. Reality.
I,m a Boomer myself. You reap what is sown
I have watched the whole creep show my whole life. From Morgentaler, to Kevorkian. Now they kill babies by sucking their brains out while being born.
It was a Pope that called it a culture of death.
Not that I,m Catholic. Prove me wrong. I fought this my whole life.
How do you think the Islamists that have replaced 3,000,000 dead Canadians are going to treat you?
Keep pretending its 1969
Look at the OWS movement. The greens, who want most of mankind dead for the Earth. Many people like me fought this. We lost. I guess you where to busy to notice. Do you think a generation that thinks nothing of sucking a baby’s brains out while being born, is going to coddle the old? All I know is I was given 5 days to pull the plug on my own Brother. The hospital wanted 24 hours.
This is the future by a generation that See’s death as a solution, not a tragedy.I really, really wish I was wrong.
https://www.compassionandchoices.org/sslpage.aspx
There is a new book out about “pension envy” which describes the great divide between the 20% minority of Canadians in cushy public-sector defined-benefit pensions and the rest of us hoping to retire on fluctuating RRSPs or defined-contribution pensions. How Canada’s public-sector unions won its members huge salaries “that far outstrip anything comparable in the private sector and incredibly generous pensions.”
Forward by Catherine Swift, President Canadian Federation of Independent Business.
Parts of the book can be read in: Search inside this book.
http://www.amazon.ca/Pension-Ponzi-Bankrupting-Education-Retirement/dp/1118098730#_
” The generation that allows you to sit on your lazy ass collecting welfare through the excessive taxes taken off me. Don’t know who pissed in your cornflakes but I doubt if you paid for them anyway.”
Excessive taxes weren’t taken off you and we have the debt to prove it. You might have lived within your means but governments didn’t.
Somebody must have been happy to have people sit on their asses or we wouldn’t have had governments that enables it for the past 50 years, for the first time in human history.
I am either a tail-end boomer or a leading edge Gen Xer depending on who is defining the terms.
I can forgive the boomers for their past…but I could shoot every last one of them for what I know is ahead.
My wife and I have busted our asses saving. Our RRSP’s are dismal – yet I am told we are well ahead of others our age. What are these aging children going to do when they can’t afford to live? What happens when these legions of pensioned union slugs, snivel servants and other overpaid morons have their pensions collapse? And what about the career welfare class?
I suspect they will try and tax the crap out of anyone that has money – and that RRSP’s will become prime targets for claw backs.
Kathy Shaidle over at 5 Feet suggests that we should blow up CPP and raise the retirement age to 75 and I agree. Somebody above was b*tching that they only got $1500.00 a month from CPP…well buddy, that is $1500.00 more than I will get when I retire. Cry me a river. Do you think my generation will have any moral reservations about slashing benefits to seniors that our grandchildren will end up paying for?
Rest assured, the boomer’s biggest failures and betrayals of their kids are yet still ahead of them. You thought they were selfish, feckless kids? Just give ’em a few more years…
What Big Bad Jim said.
Roasted for my debt post which was a rant and decidedly “not nice things to say” but the reason is because the “it’s only 38B” attitude sickens me and pisses me off. I know who gets to pay it off.
I am all for means testing social security, even if it means I won’t see a penny, which it probably does.
This “cash out generation” is so true. Yesterday I was in a meeting where we were discussing bringing on a couple of programmers from Bangalore. Those were jobs any kid with a reasonable technical education, including community college, could have done. It made me sick.
The demographic bulge these boomers represent will break us in health care costs alone. Realisticly thats why we need euthanasia.I am a gen x,er the way i see it they did not take cash out. What they did was leverage the future. The sad truth is breaking the economy is the only thing likely to change anything. Boomers vote, 20yr old s don,t and there is not enough x,ers to change anything.They are still in charge and will not vote their entitlements away anytime soon.
Fearless Leader: Speaking of BS, $10/hr in 1958 is around $75/hr today, or $150k a year. Pretty dam good for a ‘righty tighty lefty loosey’ job.
The out of work manufacturing sector our betters in the media love to moan about and the OWS people have one thing in common, they love to blame everyone except themselves. If you worked 20 years at an auto plant and all you have to show for it is an unpaid mortgage and a skill set replaced by a robot, how are you different than someone who spent 8 years getting a Fill-in-the-blank-Studies masters and unpaid student loans???
Mead includes this line in the article:
We embraced a free trade agenda that accelerated the hollowing out of manufacturing and took no thought about what to build in place of the industrial economy we condemned.
Dude reveals himself as a bit of a wanker with that line.
What minuteman, Big Bad Jim and Lance said.
peterj, you may be one of the Boomers that did it right and you are to be commended for doing so. But there were a helluvalot from your generation that didn’t behave like you, not the least of which were those who presided over the finances of this country since Trudeau’s Liberals gained power in 1968. Together they have spent the wealth of THREE generations in an insane bid to create a socialist utopia.
And now, with a tax base insufficient to support the bloated state, and generations unwilling to finance it, privation cometh. You sound like you will be spared much of the pain. Not so your generational brothers and sisters.
The best they can hope for are merciful Gen Xers in positions of power who understand the intrinsic value of life and will not turn to euthanasia as a means to relieve the pressure on social systems, like health care.
The future looks grim.
while not all of them were bad, it IS the hippie generation, afterall. Proof of the rot that exists in their brains is the fact that they are now leading the OWS movement, training a whole new gen of hippies…
not a good thing for the ones in between, the Xers.
Say, isn’t a goodly number of SDA loyalists solid members of the Baby Boom generation?
But no doubt they’re all (self-)exempted from their generation’s bad behaviour.
Davenport wrote —
But no doubt they’re all (self-)exempted from their generation’s bad behaviour.
If by “self-exemption” you mean that the Boomers posting here were the exceptions that worked hard, paid their bills, and stayed out of debt, then yes — they are self-exempted.
I’m a Gen X-er myself, so I’d better get back to work so I can pay the taxes needed to pay your pension. Or something.
Humph.
The social security problem is not that people take out more than they put in. They don’t FOR SOCIAL SECURITY as most people know it. Everybody has put in enough money to be paid out 2/3 of an annual 5% interest and still leave the system with 1/3 of what they paid in for interest and leave in their entire principal – regardless of how long they collect. Anybody that doesn’t know this is a mathematical dunce or better known as a liberal arts person.
The money in social security has gone to SSI where the ambulance chasing lawyers, phoney, illegal judges, and welfare grifters have stripped the system. Next time you see one of those ambulance chasing lawyers advertizing on television to get someone disability who doesn’t meet the requirements for disability, you can see who has caused the problem.
I’m a Boomer who has always worried about financial independance and paying my own way. Had a lot to do with the way I was raised.
Today’s Gen-Xers and younger such as our kids do not have the yardsticks to even measure what they are faced with. My parents generation fought WWII and tried to structure a society where those who needed help got it. My generation inherited the process and added benefits which I suggest were not deserved. Our sacrifice was to put the time in to make a good life but never had to shot a gun in the process.
As a conservative/libertarian I never agreed with political parties who promised more than what was affordable. Unfortunately I have never seen a party who wasn’t prepared to make unfunded promises and an electorate who wasn’t willing to accept them. The fundamental weakness in democracy is that when more take than contribute ultimately the crunch will come.
So those that condemn corporate excess should look at their own behavior and realize that the world they are living in has a ticking time bomb which should go off about 2020. The demographic does not support the social network and GDP growth projections used to defend the status quo will not be achieved.
Yes, I do blame the Boomers for most of what will occur but other generatiions will also carry responsibility. We just had a federal election not that long ago and no generation stood tall and forced the politicans to address these fundamental questions.
I think the article is simplistic.
The current pension structures and healthcare system were established by the WWII generation in the early-mid 60s when most boomers were still kids.
The boomer didn’t set it up, they inherited it.
The real culprits are those people born in the 30s. It was THEY who set about poisoning minds at universities in the 60s.The current occupy Wall street movement is the ultimate gift of the beat generation, a generation that new it could never compete with the Greatest Generation and so set about destroying the achievements of that generation via its children.
In the early 60s Boomers were good kids, went to church did charity work and were incredibly patriotic. But once they finished highschool, entered university and encountered veterans of the Beat Generation they were exposed to anti-americanism, leftist politics and an intense hatred of western values.
The Beats even defined the Boomers and they did so with a very wide brush , including in their definition anyone born between Jan 1946 and Jan 1966…as though people born in the early to mid 60s would have all that much in common with people born in the mid to late 40s!!
The Beats engaged in what I lke to call “generational imperialism”
They “stole” the boomers, brainwahsed them to hate everything the parents of those same boomers had achieved and represented, in cluding the moral values, and in doing so got revenge on a generation they resented and which they knew they could never outperform.
Charles Manson is a good example of this dynamic. Though associated with the youth culture of the 60s, he was actually born in 1934.
Most of his followers, including ALL involved in the Tate/LaBianca murders were, on the other hand, all boomers.
It’s a piece of cake for people in their mid-30s to manipulate vulnerable 18, 19 and 20 year olds whether those youths are in a crazed cult, the SDS or The Weathermen
I’d just like to add that our pension, healthcare and social-security systems were predicated on a fairly high bir-rate, which, of course, was still they case in the early-mid 60s when those systems were set up.
That has no longer been the case for decades and so the system is cash-strapped and short of workers
And so our only options have been to borrow, borrow and borrow and to import millions of immigrants.
And on the subject of birthrates, the Boomers actually had slightly more children ( per women) than Gen. Xers, most of whom are now themselves past their child bearing years.
It can all be summed up, I suppose, by that little story about the cricket and the ant. Summer is fleeting.
People are getting a little carried away.
Austerity will be on order for the next few years, entitlements will get cut back a bit, taxes will get raised,but it’s not THAT big of deal.
The “right to die” issue could take us down a dark path. Cbc is pimping the cause constantly for the second day in a row.
Actually, according to the dollartimes dot com $10 in 1958 would be equal to $77.18 in 2011. So if the Packard worker was being paid $10/hr he would earn >$164,000 in a 2000 work hour year. The average US wage in 1958 was $4,650 which would be $35,866 today.
Perhaps the $85k figure for the Packard employee was adjusted for inflation?
I read a few months ago at Americanthinker that in 1968 Lyndon Johnson had the Social Security contributions diverted into general revenue in order to fund both the Vietnam war and the Great Society welfare state without raising taxes in an election year. In 1972 the Social Security benefit was raised by %20, again in an election year. Originally you had to be 67 to claim Social Security and life expectancy was 63 which meant that less than half the contributors would receive benefits. Later the minimum age was lowered allowing people to claim earlier. Add in the increase in life expectancy and the results are going to be catastrophic for our southern neighbours.
The inherent problem in a democracy in that politicians want to be popular now so they will be re-elected. Instead of short term pain bringing long term gain we end up with government budgets that create short term gain begetting long term pain.
Myself, I am paying off all my debts ASAP, building a solar heating system to lower my heating costs and I’ll be planting a garden next spring and some mason jars. The good times are over, best prepare for tough times.
mmm,k – but why choose the most expensive(by far!) heating system?
well if anything kate, you’ve trolled out the 1st entitlement generation. Can’t fix stupid can we.
It’s a mystery how certain events become the narrative to represent an entire generation. I find it as irritating to be lumped in with the lefty students protesting grapes and smoking pot, as some of today’s youth must resent being associated with the feckless tent-dwellers. When people feel threatened and discontented, they look for a target. It might be boomers, lefties, climate deniers, young people, immigrants, Jews. “It” has to be someone’s fault after all. “Fault” is an accumulation of situations that may only in hindsight be apparent. And the assumed “better” path can never be proved because it never happened. Perhaps other choices would have been worse instead of better.
Not everything the boomers did was bad, and I’ll venture to say that among the tent people, there are some with ideals more elevated than those who defecate on police cars. We let ourselves be too influenced by the interpretations and images chosen by those who are telling the story.
This is exactly what I’ve been saying for years.
The real tragedy is that the Boomers are the ‘base’ support for our so called “conservative” governments today. Why oh why would a young person identify with conservatives when they are mostly comprised of those that have failed society at every turn?
This is the true dilemma of the conservative movement: the wolves in sheep’s clothing(boomers) who’ve usurped the conservative narrative. I’ve had a number of so called conservatives comment here about the excess money they will receive through entitlements in a few years, and been told to “deal with it” from the child like Boomers. Good job guys.
Back in the 1950s when I grew up people said, “you can’t take it with you,” when referring to death. Our generation has collectively agreed this is true, but if there’s nothing left (net of debt) when we die, we don’t care!
There seems to be a surfacing of resentment politics in laying blame to the boomer generation for the logical outcome of the millennial condition of socialism / tribalism / serfdom. There was nothing “new” about the “greatest generation” adopting and blending-in their parents socialism during the Trudeau era. The Thirties was the most Red decade of the last Century. Are many of the boomers over-indulged brats and rent-seekers? Absolutely, but speaking as someone who went to University in the late sixties and early seventies, the professoriate was already overwhelmingly socialist and trending towards watermelon. Capitalism was the revolutionary concept and the natural tendency of democracy is to revert back to statism.
For those that resent the boomers for presumably mooching off the entitlement ponzi schemes of the past, know this: Those programmes will fail in the midst of that demographic during the upcoming bulge in geriatric decline. Means tests will either replace the Tommy Douglas’ generation expression – universality, or the aged will be cut off the entitlement trap (eugenics, to use another Tommy Douglas’ fetish).
One thing I have learned over the last couple of years producing more and more of my own food. Those farmer pioneers owned guns for a reason. Neighbor’s dog just wiped out my flock of hens. No problem now, I can just order more on the interwebs, but what if I really need them to live?
BTW, lots of us baby boomers voted against this crap every step of the way.
“you can’t take it with you,”
The trick is to spend your last dollar on the day you die. Think you can? If you’re wrong you have other problems that will probably entitle you to extra, unnecessary pain.
By the way, I have never seen “boomers” equated to conservatives before. The “boomer” mentality and problems came out of liberal/marxist governance not conservative. I think I see a little projection here.
Social Security is and will continue to be solvent as long as the principal “donated” by the people that have put the most in remains in the trust fund when they die. The problem, besides the SSI robbery, is that the trust fund has invested in the U.S. Government which is insolvent. Complaining that the people who put money in, in good faith, want to get something back, is like complaining you bought a first class ticket and got bumped to coach without a rebate.
It is government insolvency outside the social security that is the problem because social security, like many banks and investment houses bought government bonds.
“and like Narcissus our generation missed greatness because of our fascination with our glittering selves.”
And hence we have Cougars and Harley Davidson Clowns walking the streets.
Ron, the solar system I’m building will initially heat water to 140-160F in a 10′ x 16′ roof mounted panel and store it in a super-insulated tank. A garage is planned for two years from now that will be aligned east-west so the entire south side will be a heating panel of 500 square feet or more angled at 30 from the vertical.
From there it will be pumped through the floor loops in the basement slab which is laid on 4″ of styrofoam. It will also be used to heat my potable water before it enters the tankless heater. Generally you heat floors to 75-80F maximum. I may be able to heat my small house most of the winter using only the electricity needed to drive two 1/4hp pump motors and a small fan or two. The propane furnace will become a backup. That’s the plan anyway.
Google “build it solar” and take a look. There’s more to solar than photo voltaic cells.
If you plan your retirement on the assumption there will be no government pension, then you’ll be in great shape.
Whatever you get back from the state leeches is a bonus.
Richard Hater:
During my father’s funeral, I forgave him.
Try it. You’d be amazed at how liberating it is to stop obsessing about things you cannot change.
Jeff said, “Austerity will be on order for the next few years, entitlements will get cut back a bit, taxes will get raised,but it’s not THAT big of deal.”
Fine, if it’s no big deal then it won’t hurt will it?
Let’s start now. Instead of adding another 38B to the debt, cut it now. Stop Spending Already!
Went to a right wing blog and ended up reading a bunch of lefy blame the other guy BS
I think some in here should reread the thread, and then try turning right, because many have fallen of the left side of the page
Dickie boy, you have a much bigger problem than your parents. Look in the mirror.
If they fed, clothed and housed you till you were 18, you owe them everything.
My father did nothing, and I would never demean myself to be a whiner full of hatred as you’re exhibiting.
Grow up.
I have turned many Boomers red faced by asking a few questions, such as “If your home is not paid off when you die, do your children have to finish paying the mortgage” The answer of course is No. So I then ask, “Then why are your children and grandchildren responsible for paying your healthcare, public pensions, unfunded private pensions and accumulated debt” This gets the sputtering started.
There is a basic assumption that future generations will have to pay for all this lavish spending and borrowing. I believe it needs to be turned around – provide solid reasons future generations must pay. Otherwise the future are not accountable and the burden falls to those who borrowed.
So we should establish a new “progressive” tax scheme. Depending on your age, you must pay for any debt and unfunded liabilities accumulated while you were voting age. It should be distributed accordingly.
[Quote] In 1968 Lyndon Johnson had the Social Security contributions diverted into general revenue in order to fund both the Vietnam war and the Great Society welfare state without raising taxes in an election year [/quote] al-in-ott
LBJ & every Congress since have spent SS/Med Money paying for things like Pelosi’s Airplane ETC.
LBJ was a thief, liar, coward, and committed treason when he refused to defend the USS Liberty during the attack on the ship. The Middle East would be very different today had LBJ done his duty.
The total SS/Medicare money that was collected, beyond that paid out, is ~ 17 Trillion. Of that only 10 Trillion is in a so-called Trust and we can’t afford to pay that money. It would have to be borrowed.
The USA must stop spending SS/Med Funds! (It was Pelosi/Obama that stole 500B from Medicare). A post Obama Audit will be required.
Bitter …. much?
Ever been stiffed for the bill, OMMAG?