Younger Gen: This will make you mad!!!!

[seneca_roman]

Quote from Scataphagos:

You apparently don't even know who deserves the blame. Ever hear of "The Government"?

There should have been a major overhaul of Social Security 40 years ago... when it was clear the demographics wouldn't support it in its then and present form.

Oh... and the government should not have STOLEN SS funds. They were wrong (or simply lied) saying, "Social Scurity benefits will never use all THAT money...".

Contrary to your belief, Social Security is doing fairly well considering it taps into somewhere around 12.5% of the USA payroll. Projections show it consumes around 4% of GDP with an uptick as the boomers retire in masses and then declining to under 4% as the boomers pass on.

Medicare/medicaid is an entirely different matter with their cost based on GDP doubling or more over the next few decades.

There was a major overhaul of social security by Greenspan in 1983 that put it on a fairly sound basis; granted some tweeking is again needed but nothing that hasn't not been done before, like raising the age it starts, cutting back on early retirement benefits and indexing the wage cap to inflation.

Seneca

 

[Sandybestdog]

Quote from Banff01: I agree that it's not the retired folks now who did anything wrong. It's the babyboomers who screwed up the system. They had everything given to them by their parents - cheap education, abundant jobs, medicare, unions. They wasted their youth doing drugs and now seeing the system slowly go bankrupt under their watch they tried getting rich on the real estate which ended up breaking the whole system. They brought us the free trade and let all our jobs be taken abroad. Let's point the finger in the right direction. They are a generation of kids that had everything and always looked for the easy way out. Unfortunately they are now in charge. No offense intended here but saying that it's the fault of today's youth who are not fighting the corporations enough is pretty far fetched.

I have suggested this to no avail frequently on ET and to people I talk to. People who bought the Dow at 500 and rode it all the way up, somehow think that they are so hard working when really they rode the inflation boom and corporate profit plundering of the past 30 years. They bought 100k homes that are now worth 500k. There’s nothing they did to deserve that. A home is a home. Why should it be worth more in 30 years? The older generations complain that young people pay no taxes, but we pay the highest, cruelest tax of all. The inflation tax that goes to them. Not to mention the 11 billion dollar national debt and 50 billion in future obligations that they have left us.

To be completely fair however, I do see a lot of young people my age who are very lazy and want free stuff. But I think that happens mostly due to how unattainable it seems to achieve the same things our parents have. Think about it. A small townhouse where I live is still about 250k. Somebody making 25k a year would have to save 20% for 5 years just to get a down payment of 10%. That’s assuming prices don’t increase in the meantime. Of course you could make more money, but college is pretty much required for that nowadays. So before you buy the house, you’d have to pay off the huge student loans.

 

[Sandybestdog]

Quote from clacy: For every old man who wants everything for free and thinks he's entitled to that (and there ARE A LOT of them), there is a 20-something that thinks they can rack up $80k in debt for an art history degree and thinks the government needs to forgive the debt and hand them free health care.

I’m sorry but I don’t understand your logic. You critisize a 20 something for racking up 80k in debt for college, but completely disregard the obvious problem as to why somebody actually has to go 80k in debt just to go to college.