David Brooks Indulges my Fantasy
of a great "small government" leader protesting the fleecing of the young by the aging Gimme Generation in a NYTimes editorial linked by several of the bloggers on my "Daily Read" list:
Tyler Cowen at Marginal Revolution
Loki at House of the Dog
Stephen Green at The Vodka Pundit
My take? It's a nice fantasy, but young folks aren't aware of the demographic train wreck that is down the road, and don't care enough to do anything about it even if they understood. It looks to me as if the nightmare that is social security as it stands is here to stay, with the Elephants fighting any change in its regressive structure and the Asses fighting any change in the unsustainable benefit levels. And Medicare and the prescription drug boondoggle? Forget about it. No one will touch that and be accused of denying our senior citizens medicine.
So us gen-Xers and gen-Yers or whatever you want to call us face a HUGE economic issue foisted on us by the previous generations, from FDR to LBJ and, yes, to the father of the prescription drug disaster, George W. Bush himself. And, while we may be frustrated with them for having done so, we will only have ourselves to blame for having been out playing with our I-Pods, watching Sex in the City DVDs, and allowing the folks in power to get us sidetracked on petty BS like same sex marriages the whole time our downfall was being plotted.
Addendum:
Well, maybe SOME of us are getting it.
Tyler Cowen at Marginal Revolution
Loki at House of the Dog
Stephen Green at The Vodka Pundit
My take? It's a nice fantasy, but young folks aren't aware of the demographic train wreck that is down the road, and don't care enough to do anything about it even if they understood. It looks to me as if the nightmare that is social security as it stands is here to stay, with the Elephants fighting any change in its regressive structure and the Asses fighting any change in the unsustainable benefit levels. And Medicare and the prescription drug boondoggle? Forget about it. No one will touch that and be accused of denying our senior citizens medicine.
So us gen-Xers and gen-Yers or whatever you want to call us face a HUGE economic issue foisted on us by the previous generations, from FDR to LBJ and, yes, to the father of the prescription drug disaster, George W. Bush himself. And, while we may be frustrated with them for having done so, we will only have ourselves to blame for having been out playing with our I-Pods, watching Sex in the City DVDs, and allowing the folks in power to get us sidetracked on petty BS like same sex marriages the whole time our downfall was being plotted.
Addendum:
Well, maybe SOME of us are getting it.
posted by soulpole66 at 11:23 PM
1 Comments:
Just browsing blogs. Stopped on this one for a minute. I'm there with you man. Fuck the baby boomers. They're the ones who ran up the national debt. They're the ones who got the sweet tax breaks in the prime of their income earning years. They're the ones who will shaft us with their problems after they retire. Twenty years, ever since I was a teenager, I've been paying to fix Social Security in higher payroll taxes. The baby boomers just used that to offset their budget deficits. Bush gave away the last of any surplus that might have accrued to his rich frat buddies. Now he's telling us we'll get a "better deal" if we invest a piece of the payroll tax on our own while he digs a debt hole all the way to China--not just figuratively. So, I figure that by the time I actually retire (if I'm lucky), I'll have paid for my retirement three times. Fuck that! Are there any other Gen XYZ'ers who give a damn?
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