Young America! Stop Letting Boomers Feed Off You
Good morning, Young America! And by “young,” I mean Gen X, Gen Y, and Millennials, many of whom just had the honor, or for some reason bypassed the honor, of voting in a national election. If the media is correct, you are really happy and enthusiastic about what you have seen. They told you to be happy. Yet you should be frightfully pissed off.
You see, Young Americans, you’ve been royally screwed. By your parents, no less. For the last twenty-odd years, since they gained power across the board, the Baby Boomers have sold your generations down the river — and they got you all to help seal your own fate. Ingenious? Insidious? However you wish to describe it, you’re going to need to legalize marijuana in a lot more states to dull the pain of what is yet to come.
The Boomers at MTV told you to get involved, to focus on the social issues, vote for change. But what were they really doing? With marketing far more effective than anything Don Draper ever imagined, they were selling you a massive bill of goods, making sure you look the other way while they continue to move the loot out the back door. And we can get political here — both parties were and are culpable, Republican and Democrat, acting with such brazen self-interest as could be expected of the Me generation members in control. More debt, more spending, more consumption — that was their American way.
Not only did you buy it, you continue to buy it. So one is left to conclude: either a) you are a willing accomplice, selling out your own futures to make sure that your parents — who gave you so much — can continue to enjoy more than you ever will; or b) you are bloody ignorant. It makes no sense for anybody to seek a worse life than they enjoyed as kids, so draw your own conclusion.
Since the Clinton era, the Boomers, your parents, have been in charge of industry, Washington, Hollywood, and Wall Street — which is the problem. With such absolute power, the old cliché applies: they are greedy, corrupt, and self-interested. And they won’t give up such status easily. In business, they are in their prime earning years, and are going to stay in their high-earning positions long enough to endure any downturn and to make sure they are set for their own retirement (what does that mean for you, coming up the ladder?). Politically, they are going to give huge sums of money to their peers running for office (it doesn’t matter the party — $2 billion dollars in negative advertising during a recession? Really?) so that they can hold onto the power which protects policies which benefit … them. You’ll hear rhetoric of change, and they’ll try to sell it to you as good for the future, but when it comes to tough choices you’ll hear outcries of fairness. Wait a minute: is it fair to steal from their kids to maintain their own lifestyles, as they have already bought the house, made the money, and run the country?
Gen-X blaming Boomers is synonymous with Obama blaming Bush.
Just absurd on the facts. Social and economic leadership has already passed through the Boomer generation. Political office, maybe less so, in particular the Romney/RINO clade – has now officially passed. So get over it. The next election cycle, even 2014, will be predominantly Gen-X, Y, Z, AA, whatever we’re up to. In part, that’s why the very idea of naming the disgusting John F. Kerry as secretary of defense is absurd – naming someone that age alone is an insult to the military, talk about (not) fighting the last war(s).
This collectivist idiocy again? Which age groups have voted for whom?
Josh,
I usually enjoy your comments, but you have flunked demography with this one. That the Boomers have spent the country into oblivion is a firmly established fact. The selfishness and destructiveness of that generation will go down in history as one of the most reckless things anybody ever did to their own posterity.
Stick around; You ain’t seen nothin, yet.
The facts and numbers and dates just don’t work that way, so what is this? Just sounds like a bunch of spoiled and entitle yutes of today are throwing a tantrum.
Well, the yutes of today do have it tough, but whining about it isn’t productive. Maybe Siri doesn’t have a quick answer for this one. So yutes of America: grow up.
You just discovered that social security is a ponzi scheme? Congratulations.
Baloney.
Government spending was completely out of control way before the Baby Boomers were old to enough to vote.
By 1960 (when I was in first grade) government spending had risen from around 8% of GDP to 29% of GDP in about fifty years. Over the next fifty two years it has gone from 29% to 41% (and it was 35% in 2006 when the Dems, unfortunately, regained control of Congress and started their little spending spree, which drove the federal part of government spending way up).
No – he’s right. In the early 70′s the SS trust fund got raided and co-mingled. At the time (this is from memory) it was almost 200 Billion dollars and being added to monthly/yearly. Within 2 years that money was GONE.
This was during the current retirees (Boomers) prime earning years, their time of gaining political power, and before most of the people being left the bill were born.
I was born prior to this (barely) and I know that I will likely never see a dime in SS. But, I WILL be left with the bill for their fiscal insanity.
I’d be willing to guarentee their retirement owing to the fact that I have morals and don’t think we can ask 70 year olds to start working again until they are 80 years old. But it would come with conditions:
1) Raise SS eligibility age to 67 and 69 (full benefits)
2) Those under 50 or 55 get to ALSO fund a retirement savings plan – into a bullet proof individually owned IRA type account. Bullet proof: not subject to bankruptcy, child support, liens, law suits, and/or gov’t changing the rules.
3) The gov’t gives matching funds to these accounts up to [x] amount of dollars.
4) Those accounts cannot be borrowed against or used before the age of 70 and will become an annuity plan.
But I’ve heard all the “I payed into it” arguments. Sure you did – and during the past 40 years you did NOTHING to protect your investment, and clearly didn’t not independantly save. You who say this count on MY morals and ethics to play to my better nature asking how I can deny you money you “put into the system” and “let you starve”. Sorry – no dice. I am willing to BAIL YOU OUT of your own creation, but it comes on MY terms, not yours.
I won’t get these benefits, which I ALSO paid into, but I DO get the DEBT you created. Demanding reform to this system to protect you, agreeing to incur more debt while doing it, and ensuring my own future is not only fair, but moral and just.
And it fixes the problem for the great grandchildren I’ll have some day.
Steven
The baby boomers were those born between 1946 and 1964. In the early seventies (let’s say 1975), they would have been from 11 to 29 years old. Hardly their prime earning years.
Lol – fine, most were of voting age, and within the next decade, ***30*** years ago, they certainly were. And they certainly were aware because during the 80′s, when I was a teen, even I heard the phrase “third rail of politics” (Social Security).
So – you take an entire post and nit pick that 1 bit. Meanwhile, while they were young, had plenty of time to fix it, or save, they did neither.
But, thanks for proving my point as to the “not my problem” attitude that’s giving pushback to young folk who try to bring up this valid point.
No, he’s not right.
And, you need to get a memory upgrade.
But what about all those Boomers who are in hawk for their Gen X unemployed childrens’ university educations? And as the investments of those same boomers go down the drain, at least the house is still there (I assume that the Boomer parents didn’t mortgage the house…)
Gen X is living on its parents’ savings. Good luck with that!
In other words, there is no way out of this mess. None.
“In other words, there is no way out of this mess. None.” There are actually several ways out, none of them pleasant. What we have is unsupportable, long term. The worst case is let it go until it collapses from its own weight, and we’re out. The other solutions are only marginally less painful. The upside is we would have something to show for the effort.
I did for my children what my parents could not do for me.
They have 4 year degrees and no debt. They have been launched successfully into the future with better preparation and credentials than I will ever have.
I never got a college degree, though I appear to have aquired a better education than most. Some of that started when I was in my teens; I figured out early that if I was going to be any kind of success, it would be without any financial assistance from my mom and dad, whom I supported financially until their deaths (mom died in 2010, my dad in 1998).
I am a boomer, born in 1951. 13 years active Naval service (nuclear submarines). 6 years in the Army National Guard. So far, I haven’t had to ask anyone for anything. So far, I have paid the assessed value of my home at least three times in property taxes. So far, my wife and I have paid about a half million more in federal and NY state taxes since we moved here not quite 30 years ago.
Perhaps I am atypical, as boomers go.
Just as I have never owned slaves, I have not made a career of spending my grandchildren’s posterity.
The debt is really just indicative of a deeper failing of the Boomers. Their kids were taught by Boomers. The Boomers rejected their parents teaching and embraced New Left radicalism. From world super power to balkanized failed state in a few decades.
Hedonism and Nihilism are what they are.
Of course if you, your spouse, and children have moved back in with them (as so many have) you would do well to keep your mouth shut and look for a job; any kind of job!
Of course that is the McMansion that they paid for with the $16 debt…so.
$16 debt? What fantasy world do you live in?
The one where typos happen and the T is missing, but it’s more like 70 trillion, including state, local, and private.
Gee, another blame the Boomers thread. First, I will admit the Boomers had it pretty good. Except for the meatgrinder that was Viet Nam and the many recessions. But there was a lot of low hanging fruit and it was not too hard to collect some nickels. But can these kids realise that our social-economic-philosophical system is in fact a continuum? It did not start brand new the day we got a corner office. The Boomers paid more into the welfare state than any other demographic. Methinks they will be lucky to get back what they put in.
But let me agree with the writer on a few points. Yes, the current system is stark raving insane. Middle class socialism can not work for long. It is wholly immoral to take money from a poorer young working stiff to pay for drugs or Social Security or Medicare for a wealthy older person. But the Boomers did not institute this. This was policy invented by politicians and sold to voters older than Boomers. After all, until recently the Boomers were paying for it. Yeah, Boomers are holding on to jobs longer than they normally would. I know some that cannot retire, though they really want to. Turns out that all that free stuff people just voted for actually costs someone something. I could be wrong but I don’t think this system can long endure with less than two people working for every retired person.
But here is the really really funny part. The kids just voted for more of the same! Here is this writer whining in such a childish way instead of educating his compatriots about the true reasons for this mess they just voted for more of. I know finding some group or person to target for his sad life is easier than actually thinking through how the nation got into this mess (hint: look back 100 years). More important, why not investigate ways to protect your labor and assets from the grasping hand of the State?
“Except for the meatgrinder that was Viet Nam .”
Lame statement. What percentage of Boomers served in uniform, let alone in country, compared to the general population? How many were volunteers compared to draftees?
“But here is the really really funny part. The kids just voted for more of the same!”
They trusted you. Their fault.
Despite the lack of understanding of civics, economics and history they are all going to get some tough remedial courses in the near future. Life really is the best teacher.
Black Bart, your comments made more sense than this article did. I must have missed work the day that memo went out.
Consider how much young people love zombie movies of late. Who do you suppose those hordes of the undead represent to young fans cheering on the resolute handful of humans fighting back?
Democrats.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4a6YdNmK77k
Anyway we can get a new generation defined? I’m tired of being lumped as a baby boomer, because that particular demographic spans 19 years. And since I’m at the back of the demographic, I’m lumped in with the supposed benefactors and blamed for everything.
And to the best of my knowledge, I’ll still get the same financial and societal screwing as Gen X. Bankrupt SS and Medicare, rotten public schools, even had to register for the draft. My age requirement for receiving SS is going up just like Gen X.
Guess I at least got to vote for Reagan, the only great Pres. in my lifetime.
Don’t lump me in with the takers, Tim.
Same here, Tex. I’m at the tail end of the ‘Boom, but share little with my older, 60s radical brothers and sister (a ten year gap between me and the next oldest). I don’t see that being lumped in with these people has ever benefited me in the least. If anything, our mutual generational subset has done well despite them, not thanks to them.
I hear you. Born in 1957 (peak year of the boom), I was too young and had no inclination to be a hippie. Instead, I was in high school ROTC during the Vietnam war. So much for being cool. I enlisted right after graduation. I’ve worked for almost 40 years and paid over $50,000 a year in combined taxes for many of those years only to see the money wasted by government. My wife and I saved like crazy because neither of us have a pension and neither of us trust Social Security to be there for the long term. Our goal is to survive without SS if we have to and not to be a burden on our kids. That may mean working longer, denying a job opportunity to a younger person but them’s the breaks. Our biggest fear is that inflation and/or government confiscation will wipe out our retirement savings. I’m considering a major investment in precious metals like brass and lead.
We weren’t alive when Social Security was enacted in the 1930s. I was about 10 years old when Medicare and Medicaid were enacted in the 1960s. We’ve paid into both of these programs for decades and doubt we’ll get much in return. Them’s the breaks, too.
Hear, hear, Larry J. I hated the hippies, hated how they changed the beautiful University I had visited through my teen years, then showed up the Sunday after graduation and found it infested with hippies. They were stupid and hedonistic then, and they are still. Like you, we have paid into the system for 50 years, and my husband cannot retire. I will probably be going back to work after Christmas. Don’t blame the boomers, blame the hippies.
Larry,
I feel for you man. I really do. Here’s the scary part:
All of you who saved and passed on instant gratification, YOU are being screwed more than you (likely) know. Here’s how:
Last year (for example) 60% (more really) of our new debt was (electronically) PRINTED FROM THIN AIR. Why? Because of the following reasons:
1) The gov’t gets that money at full value, then distro’s it out in various forms. Once that money is spent, it joins the circulating currency. More money in circulation, each dollar has less buying power, and, hence, is woth less.
2) Specifically to Larry: All that money you saved, let’s call it 1 million dollars, has been seriously devalued. In the past 3-4 years your savings, due to QE1 to QE3 have been valued, as to buying power, by 15-20%. No sh*t.
Your 1 million dollars that took years to accumulate is worth, in actual buying power, about a bit over 800,000.
3) This devaluation CANNOT be reversed. Oh, it CAN, but we would have to balance the budget, run a surplus of, say 200 billion a year, and electronically “burn” that 200 billion a year for the next 20 years. Anyone think that will ever happen?
You got ripped off and no one told you.
4) And the Fed is keeping interst rates low for ONE reason: Our maintainence on the INTERST on the debt, last year (2011) was $460 billion. This year it is $500 billion. That money is part of our budget, and CANNOT be played with – or else the dollar defaults and it’s game over. Currently it’s 1/7 of our budget (there abouts). Were we to balance the budget, it would be 1/5 of our budget.
As we borrow, that number continues to rise. As we continue to print money, each dollar becomes worth less, and all commodities bought on the world market (oil, titanium, frozen concentrated orange juice) costs more dollars.
It’s an accelerating cycle of monetary destruction.
The SOLE reason the Fed is keeping interest rates low: our debt revolves – and it’s constantly “re-bought” – if interest rates were to “spike” by, say 3-5%, our maintainence on our debt would skyrocket to 750 Billion (or more) over night. Then we have to borrow more. By printing. Business would dry up as rates rise, and tax revenues would wither – more folks on the dole : more borrowing and so on.
It IS solvable, but it means telling a lot of folks on entitlements “No” – and does anyone seriously see that happening?
Give it some thought.
Steven
Sigh. Tell me something I don’t know. Inflation (the unofficial reality kind, not the official government lie) is already undermining our retirement savings. If we get into severe inflation, it’ll reduce the value even more, perhaps to nothing like what happened in the Weimar Republic.
There has already been congressional testimony by “experts” who advocate taking over everyone’s 401Ks and IRAs because we’re too uninformed to manage our own money. Instead, they want the government to grab those trillions of dollars and promise us an annuity instead. This would be managed by those wonderful folks who gave us the current economic mess – not exactly confidence inspiring. You know that they won’t just give those annuities to those of us who actually saved. That would be unfair. Instead, they’ll “spread the money around” to everyone and blow through that confiscated money in no time. No doubt they believe they’ll buy a bunch of votes that way. They may get a lot more than they bargained for. If they ever try it, I predict there will be politicians, bureaucrats and “experts” swinging from lamp posts across the country and I’ll contribute a lot of rope to the cause.
No fear! With Obamacare, the Boomers have set themselves up to be murdered in their hospitals beds by their Mexican medical staff at the behest of the government. It’s all good!
Only the Republicans. Make sure your chart hanging at the foot of your bed says “Democrat”.
The Federal Bureaucrats now and retired. Retired legislators. The Veterans. The “Single Moms”. Those who work in mega-corporations benefiting from mostly Federal contracts, bailouts or Federal Reserve/Treasury special access to easy money. Public school teachers. University professors and staff, excepting only the rarest of schools refusing super special treatment and funding from Federal and State governments.
THIS IS THE LIST of the takers. The rest of us are the producers, or at least we pay our own way. But we are enserfed to the sinecured class and the special status citizens listed above.
It’s certainly NOT a generational divide, it is a choice your philosophy regarding why you work where or an accident of who you work for, and if you chose to be married while with child, or if absent permanent damage received from war, you chose to live connected to the teats of the Veterans Administration and buried in their special graveyards long after your military service.
The Veterans.
THIS IS THE LIST of the takers. The rest of us are the producers
Veteran’s are “Takers?” You mean to tell me that my service-connected disabling injuries are a trite little thing? I mean, especially given that 99% of the American public is too lazy or apathetic to do this task?
Listen, Bud. I have worked for 42 years now. I work while disabled. I get a pittance for painful injuries that will limit me for the rest of my life. But I still work. I’m not atypical of Veterans as a class.
And FYI, Veteran’s disability Compensation is contractual, not an entitlement. We earned this. Unless you also believe that working in a field where everything is designed to maim or kill human beings is such a small thing. It isn’t, it’s considered so dangerous that no private insurance carrier will provide insurance to you while serving. Even during Peacetime.
I have seen people shot, run over by an MBT, have an M113 fall off a flatbed car on top of them. And you think we’re “Takers?”
Son-of-a-gun, you have me really steamed now.
Don’t forget the beneficiaries of affirmative action, who have mostly bulletproof jobs in the institutions you mentioned.
“The Veterans.”
Twisted. You were never in and have no idea. The US public gets every penny back from that group. Overseas deployments to places you couldn’t find on a map, sleeping outdoors for months at a time and making net pay that would place you below the poverty line– plus that fact you might get killed or maimed– isn’t for everyone and they are not in it for the “benefits.”
Hey, don’t forget the burial benefits! Can you believe that people who die in weird places wearing silly headgear, actually get to be buried in prime real estate in Arlington VA? For FREE!!??? It’s just outrageous, I tell ya.
Oh, and a little response to the “or if absent permanent damage received from war” comment. I’d alluded to this about how dangerous peacetime stuff is, compared to everyone else.
I know a guy who, during peacetime, was serving on an aircraft carrier as a “Red Jacket” (works on the flight deck). A major fire broke out. This guy risked life and limb, and got injured during the event…picking up such things as Sidewinder missiles and rolling gravity bombs off of the deck. At any moment, he could have been vaporized, if one of those puppies had torched off.
To my understanding, He was awarded a Bronze Star for this. During peacetime.
My advice is to never start jacking your jaw to any Veteran about this stuff, whether they were peacetime or during a conflict.
Every job has its risks, not just the military. Many of the jobs in war zones are filled by civilians, they get no special lifetime benefits despite being shoulder to shoulder with those who do. Plenty a man not in Federal employ doing a job necessary for the benefit of all has gotten seriously hurt, or killed — they get no special cemetery when they die. And they shouldn’t — ideally we be a nation of equals, not having special classes.
There is a reason the grandest plum of Federal Departments is the Department of Veterans Affairs, second is size only to the DoD among all cabinet level departments, it’s wonderful politics, an easy grift. unlike the DoD there’s little hard-reality accountability allowing them to spent all our money in a way that maximizes patronage. Of course saying anything about it, agin it, raises the same kind of dander, blowback, threats, that one would get by telling an SEIU member you want to raise their employee contribution to healthcare.
Take me, for instance. Close to 19 years in one form of military service or another.
I get no benefits, no retirement pension. I am good with that, because I have all of my limbs, was never particularly well mangled and consider myself lucky that the depbt I owed to the Nation was discharged without an attendant life-long burden.
Unlike any other occupation or service, the Armed Forces is predicated on placing its members in harms way. Since Viet Nam, the members have been uniformly volunteers, and they have died and been maimed in your behalf in countless dudtups, wars and violent disagreements.
Once you let other men and women stand in your place in the place of violence, you owe them a debt you can never repay. If they are killed or crippled as a result of their service to you, you have a responsibility fo care for their surviving families and the wounded, disabled service members FOR THE REST OF YOUR PITIFUL LIFE.
That you do not instinctively recognize that you owe these people your life tells me all I need know about you.
“Many of the jobs in war zones are filled by civilians, they get no special lifetime benefits despite being shoulder to shoulder with those who do.”
Many of those civilians are former military. Yes they are paid more than the miliatry joes next to them. A veteran only gets “lifetime benefits” if he serves +20 years, if he survives, to receive 50%, maybe 75%, of his highest pay grade. Most of them never live to see 65. I have former comrades who made it and the do part time jobs to fill the income gap. The military retirement “benefits” do not pay the current bills, so they need to keep on trucking. They will. I know them.
There’s considerably more than just pennons, that’s for sure. Otherwise the Department of Veteran Affairs would not be the biggest pork barrel of all of Human History. The Bonus Marchers really did set us up for Social Security and just about every other Federal Entitlement since.
I think it is important that a young citizen, or any citizen, go to the graveyard of his own family and townspeople and see there the graves of those who fought in wars, proudly embossed with the record of their service, and for those who died in a war, a note to that effect. Those graves of good men and women besides, shoulder to shoulder, with the rest of all us. That tells a story of what it means to be a American too. To see the impact of a war directly, by the measure of the dates of death, the number a years lived before a fellow citizen’s life was taken too early in war. Military only, veterans cemeteries do not have the same impact, do not inspire the same sense of patriotism, a joint brotherhood and mission for all citizens. The greatest honor of any citizen should be to be a good citizen living in peace.
How about all the noble younger people speeding up insolvency by never contributing to the entitlements but collecting their entire lives for mood disorder disabilities, etc. or the 40% of young mothers birthing bastards to be potential wards of the state or the dumba** young people who voted the Kenyan driving the runaway car off the cliff back into office?
Granted the boomers have helped screw the pooch but nobody else’s hands are clean.
Interesting article,and for the most part accurate. Love the comments as well. Unfortunately the very people who should see and read this will never know of its existence. This is the whole problem as I see it. From visiting and reading the information presented on this and other similar sites I’ve learned a great deal about the issues and some possible solutions concerning these challenges. But let us face a hard simple reality, we are in an echo chamber. The people who need this information will not recieve it. They do not visit sites like this. I mean we have no funny videos of morons injuring themselves through acts of abject stupidity, there are no zombie apocalypse games where participants get to destroy the walking dead in the most gruesome fashions imaginable. No, we live in a society trapped in the amber of adolescence, and I fear the only thing that will get the attention of this populace will be a true apocalypse. Hopefully it will be of only the fiscal variety, because personally, I have the abilities to deal with a finacial/economic meltdown. Zombies? Not so much.
LMAO … As a member of the Silent Generation of the 50s, I just love this.
Black Bart makes a pertinent point. The Boomers didn’t invent the system. Over-simplified, that was done by LBJ’s and his parents’ generations. The Boomers just rocked along (literally) — fat, dumb and happy for the most part.
Even during the Carter years, the Boomers had it better than any preceeding generation. As Obama’s very deliberate class warfare takes hold, they are about to get the shock of their lives, and it won’t require any intervention from their kids.
I can remember outhouses. Some Boomers are about to get acquainted with them.
I hate generalizations about just about any subject/group. They paint a lot of people with the wrong brush and muddy the waters and increase divisions so good productive conversation cannot take place in order to resolve issues. They incite anger often where anger is not warranted or beneficial. Technically, I am a ‘boomer’ but I do not see myself as part of the so-called generation that this article attacks. And I hope my children are smart enough and free-thinking enough not to so derogatorily label either themselves or me either. We have had enough of pitting one group against the other – no good solutions come from that strategy. STOP, please.
Boomers didn’t grow up in a vacuum. Who raised them? Who taught them?
THE GREATEST (?) GENERATION!
First point: I was born in ’63 and all through elementary school I read in encyclopedias that the Baby Boom was ’46 – ’60. Then they started becoming demographers, and poof, it went to ’65. That is nonsense to start. They were closing schools when I was in 8th grade. Half my school was chained off for lack of enrollment. So they started by expanding their special generation. Nice.
Second point: I remember sitting around with my buddies in about ’80 doing the math and realizing, we would never see Social Security. Then his worship R Reagan in the ’80s had a reach around with the drunk Moynihan, and decided to actually increase the SS payroll tax. Some loyal opposition to entitlements. They kicked the bloated can down the road.
Third point: I have plenty but I’ll limit it to three; when you want to defeat someone, you shouldn’t alienate your potential voters. So when you want to fix things, and get a candidate elected, don’t talk about rape, condoms, God or anything like that. You talk only about money and freedom. You also don’t beat the crap out of members of your potential libertarian coalition by demonizing people who could vote for you. Same for union members. I’m one. I’m also a life NRA member. So when Bill O’Reilly calls unions the “far left” he’s a moron. Does the GOP really thing construction workers, auto workers, cops, teaches and firefighters are far left? The Democrats will allow anyone pretty much into their coalition. The GOP has decided to limit their coalition and they now have to live with the results.
I could say more. I’m sure someone will call me a troll. I’ve been called worse.
Myself, I’ve heard that the ‘Boom Generation officially ends in ’63, with the assassination of JFK. Dunno, you may wish to verify this.
RICKNYS;
Look up. That’s the vapor trail of this article.
“The GOP has decided to limit their coalition and they now have to live with the results”
Bullox. That slur is so old by now. Responsibility, liberty and less government intereference should appeal to everyone — free shit and a gigantic smear job for the Low-info-voters worked to put the most incompetent fool in for another 4 years.
But, can you see the irony in mounting a high information campaign for the low information voter?
The GOP Platform’s call for banning abortion nationwide with no exceptions for rape or incest has alienated 75% of unmarried women under the age of 40.
The GOP base staunch opposition to same-sex marriage has alienated young voters under the age of 30. Polls show that some two-thirds of them support same-sex marriage.
Don’t you see what’s happening here? Combined with the demographic fact that the GOP base skews about 10 years older than the Dem base, the GOP comes off looking and sounding like young people’s grumpy grandparents:
“Stay virgins, don’t use birth control….Don’t have abortions….Homosexuality is perverted and gay marriage would undercut our society.” “Yes, Grandpa, we hear you.”
Young people are sexual libertines; their hormones are pumping and they’re rutting. They’ve been that way since the dawn of recorded history.
The problem for the GOP is that they have made control of the sex drive into a philosophical basis for a part of their platform.
And that’s going to alienate young voters for a generation.
Sorry sinz, embracing moral and cultural relativism is defeat. You can embrace it to your hearts content. Hedonism isnt going to save the USofA, nor the GOP who will lose Social Conservatives/Christians and probably continue to be a losing party anyways, probably.
Im turning to Identity Politics and organizing ourside the GOP. Time to adjust to the reality of the situation. All is lost, time to survive, as best you can.
In the end, universal enfranchisement killed the noble experiment that was the USofA….as the Founding Fathers foresaw.
Seccession may be a good way to go.
Why is it a slur? The GOP coalition is RTW states, antiabortion people, NRA people, rich people and others. Deny that. Now, I’ll continue to support the GOP because I’m an NRA member, and that is more important to me that anything. But the GOP cannot count on the support of women and others especially when the Democrats do nothing to alienate them. I mean, as far as many voters are concerned, no news is good news. If the Democrats don’t do anything to them, they’ll vote for them again. That’s a fact.
“Why is it a slur? The GOP coalition is RTW states, antiabortion people, NRA people, rich people and others. Deny that. Now, I’ll continue to support the GOP because I’m an NRA member, and that is more important to me that anything.”
So your GOP support is based on one issue? Ok.
“But the GOP cannot count on the support of women and others especially when the Democrats do nothing to alienate them.”
Bullux. Tax rises and inflation effects us all. Across all the pigeon holed, balkanized groups the dems supposedly support.. they will get screwed the most. They carry their chains willingly, so I have no sympathy for them.
“If the Democrats don’t DO anything to them, they’ll vote for them again. That’s a fact.”
GOP message is and always was, “we will do less to you. We will lessen the burden on your shoulders.” But it takes time for a person to figure that out. Lies and propaganda always win out on the short term.
Saw the POTUS tonight.. besides alot of ahs.. ahs.. ahs.. pathetic. He really is a laughing stock around world only trumped by the dupes who voted for him. The world really loves Obama as it vindicates the stupidity of Americans once and for all.
“So when Bill O’Reilly calls unions the “far left” he’s a moron. Does the GOP really thing construction workers, auto workers, cops, teaches and firefighters are far left?”
The rank and file union members may or may not be “far left,” mostly depends on the union. Most teachers are well left of center but they generally don’t know it since they only associate with other teachers and they all think they’re centrists or even conservative. Most other public employees other than law enforcement are center-left on economic issues and center-right on most social issues. Cops tend to be quite conservative on everything but cop wages, benefits, and retirment. There was a time when the union members in the trades were quite conservative but private sector trade unions really don’t exist any more. The remaining non-public employee unionization is is the Third Sector where all the industries are heavily regulated, publicly financed, or do business directly with the government. Consequently, trade union members think and act more like public employees and have the same interests.
While individuals may or may not be far left, union staff and leadership definitely are far left and many at the National level are outright communists. When I first started in labor relations on the union side in the ’70s the unions were still in the Meany tradition of strong anti-communism and had little interest in representing public employees or in politics beyond that necessary to keep their union security clauses and keep up government capital spending projects. After a stint in private business I came back to labor relations on the employer side in the late ’80s and public employees were far more a part of organized labor but the AFL-CIO remained conservative and still in the control of the trade unions. That changed dramatically when John Sweeney became the head of the AFL-CIO. Our largest unit had been represented by an independent association which was decertified by AFSCME in ’88. They sent National staff out to organize and then to negotiate the initial agreement with us. We were a union state with a Democrat governor and while most of the LR staff had chosen to leave the union side and work for the employer none of us were anti-union in the sense of seeking to decertify unions or enact RTW legislation; they had their interests, we had ours. AFSCME declared war immediately upon certification and we quickly learned where all the old SDSers from the ’60s and early ’70s had gone to work. The AFSCME types were actually thoroughly lousy at real labor relations and collective bargaining practice because they defined everything politically and their politics was communist though they talked in terms of “industrial democracy” and “social justice.” Our labor law and labor relations practice hornbooks gathered dust as we brushed up on Marx and Lenin, Mao and Trotsky, and, especially, Alinsky. Fast forward to the late ’90s. AFSCME’s arrival had forced all the other unions into the AFL-CIO for raiding protection and public employees came to dominate the State AFL-CIO fundamentally changing the AFL-CIO, organized labor’s relationship with the business community, and the dynamics of the Democrat Party. The unions had bought themselves a Democrat governor in ’94. I left the executive branch in ’96 over union/Democrat corruption and went to work for the Republican-controlled Legislature. By ’99, the Democrat Administration had had enough of their union “friends” and hired me back to clean up the mess. One of my very first purchases in my new postion was a copy of Alinsky’s “Rules for Radicals” for every member of my staff.
I’ve been to labor-management conferences and joint trainings from Honolulu to Hahvud and lots of points in between, especially on the West Coast. I’ve met and had some interaction with staff and leadership with most of the major unions. I can’t say I’ve talked to them much because few of them will actually talk with anyone who represents the employer – somehthing else that changed in the thirty years or so I was involved with LR. From my observation O’Reilly is actually wrong; only a few of the labor leaders and staff are merely “far left,” most range from radically far left to outright communist, and some of them even know it.
You are what you support. If your organizarion supports socialists you are a socialist!
Nice perspective, Mr. O’Hair.
You do know that too many of them don’t have a reading level skill high enough to understand what you are talking about.
These poor neglected intellects are marching toward communalism, where they can all share and spread their miserable existence equally amongst themselves.
And the marijuana will be provided free by the State!
Huh… so PJM is going in for class warfare now?
The “blame the boomer” argument is a canard perpetrated by disgruntled thirty-somethings raised on unrefined self-worship.
Art Chance has laid it out. In almost every election that has counted since the 1960′s when the boomers came of age, they have affected the elections in the conservative direction, culminating with Ronald Reagan and losing influence with the strengthening of the Gen-X and Gen-Y populations, who are overwhelmingly electing democrats.
You blame me and my cohorts? Liar. Screw you.
HOOEY! I never realized how confused so many readers of PJM were until I read these comments.
Can somebody tell me which museum they have enshrined American common sense?
You won’t find it in DC.
Typical Boomers fed off their parents by “dropping out”, they fed off other people’s hard work by demanding their “fair share” of other people’s taxes. In their final years, after aborting their own, they feed off other people’s kids by demanding unsubstainable retirement payments.
Boomers live the American Dream of a life of leisure on other people’s hard work.
“unsubstainable’
Let me guess…. public school….
Speak in cliches and stereotypes much? Show me some empirical proof that the majority of boomers dropped out and lived off their parents. That’s a pile of crap. Most boomers grew up, got jobs and married and lived their lives. A couple million went to war, probably less than that dropped out in any meaningful way.
The succeeding generations have their share of stupid.
How about all the young skanks who’ve spread s.t.d.’s to drug resistant status and aborted the bulk of the next work force to keep the Ponzi scheme going? How about the human maggots in the Occupy movement who pushed political discourse totally out of the realm of civility? How about the idiocracy graduated from elite schools with crushing debt and so stuck on stupid they can’t see through a cheap little grifter like Obama?
That is utter bullsh*t! The “typical ‘Boomer” graduated from HS or college and either went into the military or went to work in a world of double digit inflation, wage freezes or stagnation, tight credit, and 15%+ mortgage interest. You could only keep the stupid ideas inculcated by your teachers and college professors – who weren’t ‘Boomers – if you went straight from school to work in government, academia, or media/entertainment. The rest of us quickly got mugged by reality.
Well, elkh1,
What you said is true for my brother, who went off to join a hippie commune in the 1970s. Eventually the children came, and his “girl” didn’t relish washing cloth diapers, or cooking on a woodstove. He got a university degree in environment engineering before the government hired millions with this degree, so he studied up to become a master carpenter. He worked off and on, when he wasn’t “exploring the earth” or golfing. But, sadly, he doesn’t have a retirement and didn’t set aside enough to adequately prepare for retirement. He bullies my octogenarian mother a lot and she thinks she ought to leave what money she has left to him because of his pathetic life.
By the bye the “girl” from the commune got a call from her sister in California when the babies were small and said get a divorce and come to San Francisco and you can get free a) apartment, b) food c) babysitting d) doctors, meds, etc. So she did, and the taxpayers paid the cost of raising the kids, though my brother paid child support, so the ex-wife bitch drove a real nice car and flew cross country to visit all her relatives except my brother and the grandparents, who rarely saw the children.
But I also have two sisters: two became RNs, worked hard and hope to retire, married, also raised children. Then there’s me, also worked hard, married, raised children, one Autistic. Our financial plans are sadly detoured. First I lost 10% of my 401k because of the GM bankruptcy. My CDs pay almost nothing thanks to Bernanke & the Washington financial shenannigans, so that source of revenue is gone. My Blue Cross Blue Shield costs $800 a month and went up $4,000 altogether in the past two years, but ACA gave me a $8 rebate check. LOL.
Did you read the Obamacare arguments and questioning at the Supreme Court? Ruth Bader Ginsberg made the point that the insurance costs for ACA would be “leveled”, acknowledging the young would be “hosed” to make sure the system is “there when they need it”. I was amused when 61% of the under 30 crowd voted for Obama again.
I have a Math degree and did a spreadsheet calculation on how long my husband and I would have to live to receive back what we paid in social security taxes, at an annualized rate of return of 5%. Me: 125 years. My husband 200 years. But the 70 million people in the US since the 1970s, many from foreign countries, will get a check not much less than my check, with only 40 quarters of work, under the country’s progressive “social” policy.
I’m not complaining. I’m just telling. I love America so very very much and I weep for the lies, deceptions, and policies certain to lead to fiscal collapse. The title of this article reminds me that I belong to just one more demonized group: older white people. I wonder if German Jews had a premonition in 1932 like I am having this afternoon?
TIME hit the nail on the head!
http://www.time.com/time/covers/0,16641,20120521,00.
Sorry; That link is bad;
It’s here:
http://lightbox.time.com/2012/05/10/parenting/#1
(1959) Don’t my kids have to get out of my pockets before I can live off them?
Some truth here, but you also need to look further back as well as at Gen X, etc. It was the parents of the Boomers who voted for FDR (four times no less) and then LBJ. The parents of the Boomers, so self-anointed “Greatest Generation” established the welfare state that is now breaking the country.
The Boomers, believing the government lie that it would take care of them in their old age, spent like mad. When their own money wasn’t enough, they borrowed like mad. Now they are old and many have nothing and so they beg government for more money. Well, government will oblige, just be ready for them to steal all the IRA’s and private retirement savings as has happened in other countries and Democrats have already talked about doing.
Pretty soon it will be a free for all as government loots everybody to pay for free stuff for everybody else to try to save itself from their wrath. In the end, only the politicians, bureaucrats and a handful of fat cats will have anything and the rest will be destitute, just like in most of the rest of the world.
Wait just a cotton-tail minute, Rover.
My only outstanding debt is my house. Credit cards are paid off every month, mostly used for timing purposes, and because my tollway tag has to be tied to one.
My kids, ages 26 and 29, are still living in my house, eating my groceries, on my tolltag account, and on my car insurance. Who is feeding off of whom??
I hope that at the very least, you’re charging them rent if they’re working. If they do hVe jobs, they should be living on their own.
O’Hair should learn the history of the programs he decries. The fact is that the benefits levels were set long before Boomers ever came to political power. He can start with the Social Security changes legislated by the likes of Frank Church and George McGovern in the early 70s. It would also help if he understood the theft of excess SS funds that the Boomer generation has been contributing to since the Jimmy Carter era. When Carter signed the tax increase from which those excess funds came, he stated to the effect that, “Boomers will now have to finance their own retirement as well as that of their parents.” The “excess” funds that were supposed to be used for Boomer retirement were promptly spent on other things by successive Congresses and replaced, literally by IOUs (.i.e., bonds) that reside in a file cabinet somewhere in Indiana. And, because it was money coming into the government, the “borrowing” was never counted against the deficit. That’s how Bill Clinton “balanced” the budget. The government’s claim that the SS fund is currently solvent is a lie. SS payments have been significantly higher that what the funds are taking in and the only reason that payments continue is because the government is borrowing to pay off those bonds. The situation was made worse by the payroll “tax holiday” that should expire on Dec 31.
SCHOOL SUCKS: The American Way
Uploaded on Feb 17, 2012
Don’t let the title fool you. This video is actually about how government-run schooling contributed to the rise of socialism, imperialism and eventually fascism in Germany between the 1890s and 1940s.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=okPnDZ1Txlo&feature=player_embedded
SCHOOL SUCKS: The American Way
Uploaded on Feb 17, 2012
Don’t let the title fool you. This video is actually about how government-run schooling contributed to the rise of socialism, imperialism and eventually fascism in Germany between the 1890s and 1940s.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=okPnDZ1Txlo&feature=player_embedded
Heh…generational arguments are funny. I was born in ’81 and have no clue what generation that puts me in. I did my six years, got my tours done, and get to live with the health problems. I wen back to school and got exposed to the future generation that cannot form a sentence or live without a cell phone for more than 10 minutes.
I got my engineering degree. I work in the steel industries, specifically controls and drives. Naturally most of my work is in China and India. You think China is an economic force now…wait for the global economy to speed up again. Whereas US mills are just in a holding patern, the Chinese have been upgrading like no tomorrow.
There ain’t no future in the US. We subsidize and churn out the wrong majors. Most of my fellow engineering students were from overseas. No one wants to invest as too many funds are tied into payroll benefits. I’m in the process of changing my nationality because the 20% disability rating isn’t worth staying here.
I expect more and more American born STEM majors to do the same.
Good riddance. It’s a shame that we educated you though. Waste of energy and resources for no return.
We shouldnt be teaching foreigners our technical expertise, either.
Aw that is cute. Seeing as I did tours in Iraq and Afghanistan…along with paying into the Post 9-11 GI Bill program…I think I more than earned the right to go to college.
Sorry for not wanting to pay high taxes into a country that I average less than two weeks out of the year visiting.
Also, go ahead and try to stock up STEM majors in colleges with just Americans. The kids don’t want to take the fields because its hard work.
Better get used to the brain drain.
Thank you for your service and good luck to you.
“Good riddance. It’s a shame that we educated you though. Waste of energy and resources for no return.”
Get used too it. You would be surprised how many of us have already left.
My sister and her husband had their college education paid for by their parents, yet my sister and her husband has made their son take loans from them with a very low interest rate for his college education. My parents paid for my and my sister’s college education with no expectation to be paid back, just like my parents went to college and their parents paid for them. Now my sister, who is a Baby Boomer (I’m a Gen X’er, significantly younger than my sister) is expecting her son to pay her back for college? My husband and I (and my husband’s mother and grandmother paid for his college) are floored that my sister is not paying for her son’s college and expecting to be paid back when she got a free ride for college from our parents.
The raid on pension funds began in the 70′s, culminating in the 80′s. Buy ups of heavily regulated businesses like banking and insurance due to crazy deregulation was rationalized as, “efficiency” even though the companies purchased were in sound financial shape. The raiding wars and acquisition and mergers of the 80′s typified this.
Power was handed to the boomers by the Eastern Establishment, families who had strong ethical standards. But the heathens that raided the markets stripped them bare.
Say what you will about the Occupy folks, but staying outdoors for extended periods earned some respect from me. I’ve noticed the lessening of both physical, mental and emotional toughness has diminished. In my 30′s I took a Geology field course for into Geol in Montana for five weeks in which we went from 5 am -midnight six days a week. On my day off, I climbed mountains and hiked.
Several years later, while working on my Masters in Spanish Education, we have a Gen Y being feted in our seminar class for her 4.0. When another older student and I reviewed her classes, there were no quantitative classes (computer or math). I noted that she took the Environmental Geology field course (it replaced the courses I took). When I asked her for details, it turned out that it was not much more than a sight-seeing trip in Geology, in which the students stayed in hotels.
Even if you don’t say anything, the derision and contempt is palatable. And they always seem to respond like deer caught in headlights. I feel sorry for them that they weren’t given the opportunities for independence and self-worth.
I’m glad that I was born when I was.
So…er… PJMedia…uh…you know that you aren’t helping your cause a bit by publishing these kinds of articles, don’t ya?
You need to get conservatives to work together, not tear themselves apart over who was born when and over who got what from Santy Clause.
btw, Boomer haters? Just so ya know, most of the programs you hate and blame on us…were put in place by your-great grandparents and great-great grandparents. We didn’t start Social Security, huge military budgets or even the ‘war on poverty’ or a host of other big government programs that you’re blaming on us. Our first President was Clinton, btw. Members of our generation didn’t begin to dominate Congress until relatively recently, either. No, we haven’t helped matters a damned bit, but we weren’t the causative factor in what’s going on, today. It’s called ‘history.’ Get some. It’ll make things easier on yourself.
Yeah, what Warren said. Learn historical chronology you boneheads. The Great Society, War on Poverty, and the Vietnam War? All occurred/started while we were still in high school and middle school; we got to then lose 50,000 boomers in that last one. Even the good stuff we’re mistakenly given credit for, like the Moon landings — all the previous generations.
Granted, a whole lot of boomers drank the spendthrift collectivist Koolaid, but not me and not Warren or Josh.
Oh, by the way, you like the computer revolution? Love your iPods and ‘Droids and laptops and video games? Boomers built that. You’re welcome.
I’m a boomer — an early one no less. Count me out of the blame, because I didn’t want this debacle to happen, and I’m not the only boomer who feels this way. Don’t lump us all together. Many of us started voting against this trend starting in 1980, 32 years ago. What is transpiring is not what we wanted. Don’t lump us by age group, but go after my contemporaries who didn’t listen to or vote like the likes of me.
Other than that, do like Josh says and stop whining and change things for the better. Have a nice day.
When 40% plus of new Americans are born without a Dad married to Mom, and born to those of the post-Boomer generation, it is clear that LONG TERM, if we survive to LONG TERM, it is that cohort which will be the biggest expense of all Why? Because the poor children born in such situation come into adulthood with much higher rates of significant psychological disorders, criminal behaviors, poor behavior control and do worse in school, and all the mix of burdens those without a Dad, and raised in poverty or near-poverty by a single-mom have. How they they possibly be wealth-creators? Only Providence can keep them in their time from being a ruination, from avoiding their own generation’s ruin.
I feel for the youth who are not of voting age but for those 18+ who voted for O, sorry, they blew it, they had a chance to make a difference to at least apply the brakes and perhaps give us a shot to drive changes to cut spending.
Forward!!!!!!!!! they chose.
By the way, here is an excellent video which explains our debt problem, it needs to be updated to the $16T + debt
http://www.americanthinker.com/video/2012/11/us_debt_crisis_perfectly_explained.html
I am so absolutely sickened by the bunch of whiners who blame their life of non luxury on the baby boomers.
I will explain in even words a dumbocrap can understand.
We the boomers worked all of our lives, fought and died for our country, paid taxes that were spent supporting leeches who found it easier to have another kid and collect welfare than to get honest work.
We paid taxes as per our gov’t demand, paid into SS per our gov’t demand, raised our children in hopes they would have it better than we did as children. What we have gotten instead is a generation of fu*king whiners that wish to throw us over the fence for the hogs to eat because we are now collecting back the money we were forced to pay in.
It is fact that none of you will probably see SS benefits as the dumbocraps raided the trustfund to make their buddies richer and spent all the money on social programs that reward the lazy. It is not my fault you think you should have a free ride for the rest of your life. I worked, raised my family, sacrificed to save.
If you are worried about it so much, then make your changes to your financial security and quit expecting Mom, Dad, Grandpa, and Grandma to support you while you sit on your lazy ass and whine.
Lastly, It was not the boomers who put Obama in office for a 2nd term. It was the spoiled rotten brats who think that Santa Clause is in the oval office and their spoiled little ride is for life.
Get the hell over the boomers. I don’t recall being asked if I wanted to be born in 1947, but it happened. It was dealt with and now its your turn.
I am so absolutely sickened by the bunch of whiners who blame their life of non luxury on the baby boomers.
I will explain in even words a dumbocrap can understand.
We the boomers worked all of our lives, fought and died for our country, paid taxes that were spent supporting leeches who found it easier to have another kid and collect welfare than to get honest work.
We paid taxes as per our gov’t demand, paid into SS per our gov’t demand, raised our children in hopes they would have it better than we did as children. What we have gotten instead is a generation of whiners that wish to throw us over the fence for the hogs to eat because we are now collecting back the money we were forced to pay in.
It is fact that none of you will probably see SS benefits as the dumbocraps raided the trustfund to make their buddies richer and spent all the money on social programs that reward the lazy. It is not my fault you think you should have a free ride for the rest of your life. I worked, raised my family, sacrificed to save.
If you are worried about it so much, then make your changes to your financial security and quit expecting Mom, Dad, Grandpa, and Grandma to support you while you sit on your lazy ass and whine.
Lastly, It was not the boomers who put Obama in office for a 2nd term. It was the spoiled rotten brats who think that Santa Clause is in the oval office and their spoiled little ride is for life.
Get the hell over the boomers. I don’t recall being asked if I wanted to be born in 1947, but it happened. It was dealt with and now its your turn.
It concerns me that this article gives example of how the left’s “divide and conquer” approach is working. They divide people into demographic sub-sets and then put them against one another.
This article made me pause for a while. It is one of the few which I revisited a day later. It gave food for thought.
I come back to the reality that respect for one’s elders is important. Sure, I’ve clenched my fists at times and effectively shook it at my parents, but as I have become older and now have children of my own I have been privileged to see how imperfectly human my parents (Boomers) are, and how much I can relate to them and their experiences.
OK, so what if they made things worse. It’s human nature against our best intentions and people will live down to the expectations if we are looking for them to fail. What we need to do is take a moment and be grateful for that which we do have. Thanksgiving is one week away, and I encourage everyone to really pause and reflect on the treasures we all possess. Tell your loved ones that you love them. Thank a veteran and police officers / firefighters. Forget about the money aspect which clouds appreciation for what others do and have done.
The Baby Boomer generation has perputrated myths about itself that just won’t go away. Case in point. A radio sation I work at runs a PSA with sounds of marching protesters in the background and the narrator says: “The Baby Boomer Generation is known to be just as generous today as they were their youth. Thats why they should continue giving” My thought was “Yeah with others peoples money” Were / are they really? By the was just to let you know I am second half baby boomer (born 1959)
This is what you call a canard… a prevarication