(Hat tip Tigerhawk) The Financial Times explains in numbers what Mark Steyn has asserted in words. We don’t have enough people to pay our bills. The advanced economies are piling up generational debt so fast they need to make children pronto so they can saddle them with unpaid obligations. Forget having kids because they’re wonderful; you need them to pay off the stimulus. The FT says the ageing bill will be a tsunami that will dwarf the current economic meltdown. “In the UK, for example, the government expects the extra annual costs imposed by ageing to reach 1.6 per cent of GDP by 2017-18. That is an increase in spending equivalent to the cost of servicing a rise in the national debt burden of about 37 per cent of GDP, according to FT calculations. That outstrips the 29 percentage point rise that the financial crisis and economic downturn are expected to inflict.”
The red ink of a greyer future … Officials in many countries are prone to talking about the problem in terms that hide its immediacy: the impact of ageing on the world in four decades’ time is more commonly discussed than the weight of the problem in just 10 years. But demographic phenomena can have a significant impact on a society within a short time-span. … France, Germany and the US are among other countries set to see a sudden deterioration in demographic costs in the next decade after a long period of relative placidity. … It will take another 20 years of greying for Europe to become as elderly as Japan’s population is today. The rest of east Asia is in a race to get rich before its people get too old to work. South Korea is currently well placed, with six citizens of working age for every pensioner. Yet thanks to a collapse in its birth rate, it will be one of the greyest countries on earth by 2050.
It’s interesting to recall how, in 1968, Paul Erlich wrote a bestselling book predicting a “disaster for humanity due to overpopulation and the ‘population explosion’. The book predicted that ‘in the 1970s and 1980s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death’, that nothing can be done to avoid mass famine greater than any in the history, and radical action is needed to limit the overpopulation.” It’s ironic to read this now in the light of the actually emerging demographic tables, but in its heyday the idea of the “population bomb” was as popular as today’s belief in Climate Change or the Y2K bug or Nuclear Winter of recent memory.
The Population Bomb was written at the suggestion of David Brower, at the time the executive director of the environmentalist Sierra Club, following an article Ehrlich wrote for the New Scientist magazine in December, 1967. In that article, Ehrlich predicted that the world would experience famines sometime between 1970 and 1985 due to population growth outstripping resources. Amongst other remarks, Ehrlich also stated that “India couldn’t possibly feed two hundred million more people by 1980,” and “I have yet to meet anyone familiar with the situation who thinks that India will be self-sufficient in food by 1971.”
Maybe he just didn’t meet enough people. It is amazing how those who are absolutely convinced of the “limits to growth” and the “limits” of this and that are rarely troubled with the limits to their own certainty. Certainty is hard because the problem with the future is that hasn’t happened yet; and when it does, it is often not what we thought it would be. Maybe life really is like a box of chocolates where you never know what you’re going to get. Who would have thought that a Youth Generation worried about a crowded planet might finish up being worried about growing old alone.
I predict that some tech rev will change the equations quite dramatically. Could be nano. Could be something else. Either way, we’ve had naysayers since the time of Thomas Malthus. And even if we do hit a physical limit as to the number of people we can pack onto the planet, we’ll have figured out how to mine / populate the solar system around us. Humans are an ingenious bunch. That much I’m willing to bet on.
Those who have read Mark Steyn know he has done extensive research into population replacement Through demograhics and history his claim is that NO COUNTRY has ever regained it’s majority after falling below 1.3 births per couple. That 1.3 figure now encompasses almost all of Europe and Russia.
The City Council of Brussels is majority Muslim. The most frequent name given a male child born in England is Mohammad.
The US is holding on to replacement at 2.3 (the minimum figure for replacement) birth’s per couple but that is for our entire population which is becoming toxic with immigrants who have no loyalty to the US, they just want the goodies.
Not good.
Well Habu, many of the elites that have one or zero children have no loyalty to the United States, either. I would frankly take my chances with Mexican immigrants that are nominally Catholic, hard working, child bearing and family oriented than many of the faculty of Ivy League and other major schools of the “academy”.
I was in the lobby of a theater the other night, surrounded by the teenage offspring of middle class America, and frankly it was pretty depressing just how silly and vacuous they all were.
The future of the Republic. Heh.
This type of thing will continue until we return to a bipolar, now probably tripolar world where Russia, China and the USA each have client states. However, it may be too late for that now.
A multipolar, polyglot world is not going to work. We must be able to trade off countries to our adversaries in an orderly fashion as opposed to adopting a posture of ally and then abandoning them, or being abandoned because we do nothing or they do nothing. Hell, we don’t have any real allies given our record since Korea. OK, the Aussies.
It worked for decades, keeping nuclear arms in check, etc. What interest aside from a philosophical one do we have in the affairs of genocidal warring tribes in Africa? Things are out of hand because the “Big Boys” power has been diluted by “independence movements”, Islamic terrorism, etc, that are, when all is said and done, inimical to our interests.
Other than to contemplate how gruesome a death being necklaced would be or decapitated with a Mark IV O.J. “capitator” knife I could give a flip about the Hutu’s and the Tutsi tribal war.
3. E. Nigma
Was the movie good?
Hahahahahahahahahahaha Hhhhhaaaaa! You old selfish bastards and bitches are getting your comeuppance! Me generation Bah!
Shakespeare was wrong. Start with the “Social Scientist” and then the career politicians!!
Jim
“I was in the lobby of a theater the other night, surrounded by the teenage offspring of middle class America, and frankly it was pretty depressing just how silly and vacuous they all were.
The future of the Republic. Heh.”
Take heart, the ones that matter are not there. They are working at that time or are studying. The scene you witnessed is the chattel of the ruling party.
Jim
Manny,
I believe the path we are on will preclude a tech rev from doing much of anything. We are recreating the Soviet Union. The tech rev from 1917 until its collapse hardly improved the life of ordinary people. Advances were used to keep the new aristocratic class in charge. In fact, they have not given up to this day. And achieving a 59 year old life expectancy for the peons may in fact be a solution for the political class.
I am struck by how the government actually prefers impractical solutions. We are firing 187 lasers at jelly filled capsules to create a fusion reactor that might generate electricity in ten years (optimistic projection) — this according to folks who been saying that for the last 30 years. In Europe they are spending 19 billion on a fusion reactor that will never produce usable power. Of course, we want in. The real energy alternative is spending billions researching energy alternatives. We’ve been doing this for 50 years. Where the F are they?
Meanwhile South Africa develops a pebble bed reactor that can be popped into existing coal plants and simply replace the coal. It will cost a tad more than coal (but without the incredible taxes coal faces)but much less than wind and solar (and the new grid those alternatives will require). So of course we will go for high cost designer electricity that requires legions of central planners to cut out the competition and a trillion dollar “indirect contribution” from consumers to make it all look competitive with what they destroy.
This is not the environment in which innovation will be allowed to get beyond the lab bench. Think of designer algae to make jet fuel, and then think of the money raising scare the enviros can whip up. Nanobots? My God, they will take over our bodies. We are talking about people who can make you terrified of canned tuna.
I think in the US we’ll have more children as we lose trust in government to take care of us faster than we lose faith in the Lord. And big business, an important Democrat constituency, may end up favoring free markets when they realize the Democrats are bossing them rather than they bossing the Democrats. Of course, we don’t have much time for the turnaround to begin and I don’t see much evidence of it yet.
Is this behind the whopping %20 decline in economic output predicted for Japan this year? I know there are other issues, there always are.
Derek
What if the next generation simply elects officials who campaign on the promise of slashing Social Security, Medicare, etc. The present generation can present the bill for their retirement to the next generation, but they really have no way of forcing the next generation to pay.
The most interesting thing is this:
The Baby Boomers are going to have to count on their neglected offspring (The GenXers) to fund their golden years.
The GenXers will be in their golden earning years when the Boomers are in their motor homes.
Personally, I would not count on GenXers funding cross country trips for motor homing Boomers. They (we, I am one) think rather differently. While Boomers are dreaming about a million points of light (or ‘no more nukes’ or the wearability of burlap sacks) the GenXers will be funding a million cans of Alpo.
The Boomers were in their top earning years in a time of great wealth.
Not so much anymore.
Fend for yourself…
10. jms:
I don’t think that any generation would object to giving up Social Security provided the goverment ceases to take money from you, allowing you to handle your own money. This of course would begin sometime in the future and not applicable to those who have already paid into the systems for a lifetime.
Absent that it is immoral to take money from an entire generation and then not pay them back anything promised. But as currently composed the Congress won’t even allow 5% of your earnings into a private investment.
Had they allowed me to invest all the money they have taken from me over my 45 years of working I guarantee you I would have millions as opposed to a promise.
If you want to pursue the idea , attempt getting Congress to make it voluntary. Withdraw yourself from the programs you mentioned, but don’t encourage the Federal government to abrogate an involuntary program that took and took and took and then returns none of what it promised. That is totally immoral.
One thing I absolutely don’t buy the idea that there are limits to growth. What I do buy is that there are limits to extractive methods.
What I think was characteristic of the 1960′s was that the geometric gains from technological improvements slowed down to merely arithmetic gains from technological improvements. For example US peak oil production came in the early 1970′s. It was this noticeable slowing that set off the whole limits to growth thing–and the idea that you needed to limit the population growth.
In the next ten years we will be moving back into geometric gains from technological improvements. (But not by way of oil extraction.) We will witness a noticeable acceleration. That means that our extractive tools will move up an order of magnitude. An apt comparison would be on the order of, say, the killing off the buffalo in the Midwest–to planting the entire midwest with crops.
I would further argue that this process has been going on since the dawn of time. About a year or so ago I was struck by an article I read on the The ancient struggle for existence between humans and giant clams Basically paleneontolgists found that a species of giant clam in the red sea which currently makes up a very small proportion of the red sea clams — once made up 80% of the red sea population of clams. The collapse of this population of red sea clams coincides with the first coastal migrations of humans out of africa. Paleontolgists looking at the fossils found that clams were a big part of the early human diet along this coastal migration route. And this species of clam was particularly easy to get to. The inference they draw is that the coastal peoples exploited the population of clams and then moved on–either to other species or up the coast.
While the facility at Cern may provide technology for the 2nd half of the 21st century–I think that the work at the interface between water and power will provide the giant clams for the 1st half of the 21st century. There are lots of candidates.
You Gen X’ers who all seem to be Oracles at Delphi let me ask. Are you consumers? Do you have debt? Do you deny yourself things that are non essentials?
It sounds very much like you’re having a temper tantrum.
I might also say that 99% of you have never had to defend the USA by force of arms. Believe me, it changes your perspective, but your generation got a free ride.
10. jms:
The present generation can present the bill for their retirement to the next generation, but they really have no way of forcing the next generation to pay
Wanna bet?
11. Boghie
The Baby Boomers are going to have to count on their neglected offspring (The GenXers) to fund their golden years.
The Gen X’er were worth neglecting.
We all dumped 15% of our earnings into the ponzi scheme.
Yet, until the Boomers start croaking from the complications of their 60′s lifestyle, it is the Boomers that have elected the “Clowns that can’t say no”.
And, Social Security benefits ‘invested’ at 4% would leave you a benefit of about $9,000 a year (inflation adjusted). That is $750/month. Assumptions: Earning $25,000 at 25 years old, salary growing by inflation rate.
I’ll give the Boomers that.
I will take the $14,000/year my contributions provide – not the $23,500 the politicians are ‘offering’ me (my average salary has been higher). But, I don’t want it taxed. It wasn’t taxed before the Clinton Administration.
I have been saving a huge chunk of my earnings for retirement because I had NO confidence in the politicians the Boomers kept voting in.
Don’t ask for more.
Don’t think you are getting more.
Hmmmm . . . didn’t the “next generation”, with rather impressive numbers, recently elect to place the rope around its own collective neck, jms? The debt is already being ammassed: look up the CBO budget projections extent to 2019. You can not elect to renege on payment when governments, chosen by elections in which you do not have the numbers, do the paying. Eventually you will have the numbers, of course – demography, mortality and all that, but by then, dear Boghie, it may be Alpo for all.
The harsh truth is that Social Security and Medicare as entitlement programs are bankrupt. By some estimates, the unfunded liability approaches $100T (per Richard Fisher, President of the Dallas Fed).
Unfortunately, Boomers were told that SocSec and Medicare were pension programs: you pay money in, and after you retire you get to withdraw. But that is never how the actual programs worked. They are, in reality, intergenerational transfer payments (aka old-age welfare).
There is nothing wrong with this; in fact, such a program can be a positive good (allows people to be more risk-neutral than they otherwise would be). But the rubber will hit the road when working class people trying to pay for college realize that their hard-earned money is supporting a lifestyle of leisure and consumption for those who have an order-of-magnitude more wealth. Why should one of my construction workers pay into a system that a) will never be able to pay them back, and b) sends monthly checks to millionaires like my dad?
There is only one feasible approach to this problem: means-test benefits and move back the age when benefits begin. This approach will bring the system back into solvency, and provide protection against destitution to the older generation.
Habu is right, however. This totally screws the folks in that generation who worked hard and paid into the system. The alternative, however, is total bankruptcy of the entire system and probably a collapse of the country when the riots starts.
If there are other approaches, I’d love to hear them, but having looked at this issue a fair amount I’m not optimistic.
As regards the “population bomb” canard, to me it exhibits the power of a lie that fits what people want to hear. Fact is that kids are expensive and a pain to raise; when someone shows up and says you can actually “save the planet” by doing what you want to do (instead of what you should do), the attraction is irresistible.
Thus we see the end of Europe. RIP. With the emphasis on the P, please.
L3
Credit or blame massive efficiency gains. Citizens can live completely modular lives at so little cost. Just pick your favorite template from Myspace or Blogspot, and you may feel like a unique individual. Perhaps even “special”.
Ironic how people who practice market-researched tribalism actually come out thinking “Now I am somebody, not just anybody!” It only requires scanning a ten-billion entry database to locate these interesting somebodies, using keywords that are not even slightly “key”.
However banal, when life is priced so low then why clutter your freedom with kids? Even if you breed, the personal cost is defrayed by entitlements like daycare and public schooling.
Of course don’t expect everyone to be satisfied with cookie-cutter reality. Leaders aren’t giving up their ultra-uniqueness just to be small but enlightened citizens of the world, just as they won’t let their kids go to public schools.
Social Security has been an unsustainable fraud for decades. I came out of college in the mid-70s and have never expected anything more than beer money from it — ever.
In fact, I know few in my age cohort who have thought of Social Security as anything but a Ponzi scheme.
So what if my parents’ generation have gotten far more out of it than they put in. They also got Depression and World War.
Each generation is given its own challenges and advantages. Pissing and moaning about the cards you’ve been dealt instead of playing them wisely won’t win you the game.
Crybaby culture.
Leo,
I say, just set the ‘old age welfare’ benefits using the actual numbers for that individual over the lifetime of contributions. Social Security bonds averaged about 4%. If that individual falls below a certain number than increase the retirement benefit to a reasonable benefit (that would be a wealth transfer).
Then, Social Security would not go broke. You wouldn’t have to change ‘retirement’ age to 82 years old. You would not have to means-test the benefit.
And, it would provide a baseline for the retired.
Hopefully, folks that have earned income for forty years saved a little bit each month to put some spice in their retirement years. It really isn’t hard to save 5% – 10% of your earnings if you are above the poverty line. This year was the FIRST year that Social Security expenditures exceed Social Security revenue. We all knew it was coming, but everybody expected the problems to become acute in 2020 – ie, when the GenXers retire. Oh well, time to adjust…
Habu and Stephen, I hope you have saved for retirement. The GenXers never had the impressive numbers to change the dynamics of the Boomers. President Obama is a stereotypical Boomer. His is 48 years old, a big dreamer, not very pragmatic, and someone who is trying to set the big stage. He is probably the last of the Boomer Presidents. The GenXers are setting their preachy pulpit to the ‘Tea Party’ thing. They will be ‘Going Gault’.
Stephen, GenXers are aged 24 to 44 years old. Boomers are 45 to 65 years old. The Millennials are the newest cadre to join the military. However, GenXers have served quite well.
Steyn is right and the parallel to Erlich is inapposite. Erlich was talking about a multivariate system open to innovative intervention. Steyn is talking about a system with one basic variable: reproduction (actually two: death is the other, but a decrease in the latter exacerbates the problem and an increase is only acceptable to totalitarians [uh oh!])
Spengler has written extensively on the matter and puts forth the theory that the failure of hope that depresses birth rates is related to the recognition that the affected culture is dying from modernization or some other existential threat with no expectation of an afterlife for the individual. Sounds reasonable.
L3 – Glad somebody else see the necessity for needs-based Soc Sec, but it will only come after total cash-flow collapse. Another not pretty prospect.
21. Vinny Vidivici:
Each generation is given its own challenges and advantages. Pissing and moaning about the cards you’ve been dealt instead of playing them wisely won’t win you the game
Vinny you’ve hit on a key Burkean postulate.
The Enlightenments Edmund Burke said that since man was not given to see the future, each generation would have to handle the problems that confronted it. I always embraced this idea since history is full of surprises.
Take the latest stock market cycle that has destroyed half of the worlds wealth. Not too many forsaw that event and had the masses seen it coming it would have been stopped. Now we deal with it the best way we know how, including all of the debate on just what is the “best” way.
I assure you that the Boomers who had more than a room temperature IQ knew SS was a ponzi scheme. I mentioned the other day that although I have made millions I never spent it. I’ve lived in the same 1000 square foot house for 25 years, driven cars years after they’ve been paid off and invested in a diversified portfolio that I prudently liquidated prior to the “correction” Enron tipped me off.
However I realize others haven’t been so fortunate and thus count on SS payments to at least add mayo to the Alpo. They paid in , they should get it out, otherwise you rend the social contract and chaos ensues and you lose. (I’ll be with my money in other parts of the world) Cash, for the forseeable future is king and so far I’ve trumped the system. Inflation will change the cash is king mantra but only if one doesn’t respond with the proper investments. My ear is to the ground on that I assure you.
So Gen X’ers start saving and stay out of debt. Debt is a killer. Buy puts on nukes being used somewhere within five years.
Vinny,
Your parent’s generation probably broke even – or maybe a bit ahead – with regards to Social Security benefits.
It wasn’t till 1968 that Social Security revenue was ‘invested’ in Social Security bonds that allowed the government access to it. Some of those ‘investments’ were good, some were very bad. The right wingers rant about Social Security being securitized, but who wants an absolutely no-growth investment for retirement. And, government investement must have had some positive influence on our GDP.
However, the government grabbed too much, promised too much, invested rather poorly, and assumed future generations would pony up. I don’t think the GenXers will pay more than 15% of their income to this mess. I don’t think they will accept a huge increase in the Social Security limit. This generation knows what investing 12.5% of income could have generated over a forty year timespan. That is comes up so short will result in a rather nasty fight. Maybe the ‘investments’ were not investments for retirement. Maybe they funded political fun and games from 1968 onwards.
How could our government only run a real surplus once in a forty year span of amazing growth? I would rather invest in AIG or General Motors. They did better.
Make that puts until obama leaves office in 3+ years since he’ll do anything to avoid nuclear anything.
The go long on calls ‘caise it’s gonna happen.
Anybody know where the “Doomsday” clocks hand is right now? Heck I’ll look it up.
It’s swell that somebody like the Financial Times is finally discussing the relationship between fertility and finances, but apparently everybody still wants to shy away from discussing the opposite relation: between finances and fertility. Undoubtedly, this is a far more neuralgic topic (because then we’d have to, you know, actually do something right now, like, in the present and all): the effect that fiscal policy has on fertility rates.
Along that line, I’m always happy to (re-)introduce analyst John D. Mueller to any audience. Demographers have known about the worldwide decline in fertility rates, well, even before Mark Steyn wrote about (yeah, that long!). And some pretty brainy people — demographers, political scientists, economists, even the odd (and I do mean odd) evolutionary psychologist, have tried to figure out the causes, and I’ve read most of their proposals. Even the people who propose them admit they’re not all that impressive — they don’t account for that much of the variance.
But then I stumble across Mr. Mueller, quoting St. Augustine, writing waaaaay over there in some obscure journal that nobody ever heard of, and his simple equation accounts for enormously more of the data than anybody’s, including those of Nobel prize winners.
Basically, Mr. Mueller says, it comes down to this. People have children because they love them — or because they love themselves. And fiscal policy — being as it introduces incentives and all — has predictable effects on just how much capacity (Wretchard might say, ‘design margin’) people have for loving children, versus for loving themselves.
His paper, “How Does Fiscal Policy Affect the American Worker?” shows that if the level of social benefits supplied by a government goes up too much, fertility declines, and also, if a government taxes labor income too much vis a vis property income, fertility declines then also. This is true world-wide; it’s not a local phenomenon. Also, frequency of worship is POSITIVELY related to fertility (not as causation necessarily, but because it’s an index of people’s capacity to love more than themselves). Here’s how he says it:
“Fertility is about equally inversely related to per capita social benefits and per capita national savings, but strongly, positively related to frequency of worship (an indicator of people’s preference for persons other than themselves). Thus, either allowing social benefits to rise as a share of national income (as Democrats propose) or forcing workers to save more by shifting the tax burden to labor income (as Republicans propose) would tip fertility below the replacement rate of about 2.1 children per couple. Combining these analyses leads to an important conclusion: To avoid both a fall in fertility below the replacement rate and a rise in the unemployment rate as in Europe, social benefits must not be permitted to grow as a share of national income and must continue to be financed by taxes on labor income, while government services benefiting both workers and property owners must be funded by an income tax that falls equally on labor and property income.”
Go to this link. Then find ‘View as pdf’ at the top right, click on that, follow the directions that pop up and download the pdf of the paper, and read the whole thing.
DOOMSDAY CLOCK IS 5 MINUTES TO MIDNIGHT
Thats pretty close in it’s overall timeline and it hasn’t been reset since 2007. I say they move it to 4 minutes til next go around.
Habu:
What you say about prudence in matter financial could have come from my grandfather.
What was it Lee Harris said in ‘Civilization and Its Enemies’ about the atrophy which sets in a few generations away from a time when you had to sleep in the fields to keep you crop from being stolen or had to wory about daughters being carted off by warlords?
We’ve built a relatively consequence-free world where we can opt out of unpleasantness and inconvenience, rarely pay for our foolishness, and blame circumstances or others for whatever misfortune befalls us.
Hardship and sacrifice, once essential aspects of a life well-lived, have been banished as forms of ‘failure’ to be avoided at all cost.
We live lives today which were unattainable at any price just a half century ago, and even our poor live better than most on this planet.
Freedom is hard work, but too many are now unprepared and unequipped — their atrophy makes them receptive to the siren song of statist ‘security’.
24 Habu,
Concur.
While I have not made millions I will live comfortably. Drive cars for a decade or so (excepting a Chrysler that blew up in year 7).
I think you will find the GenXers are living your dream. Look at the patterns. They are excepting the reality of the situation. It is the GenXers (age 25 – 44) who are reducing spending and who the government is trying to entice back into debt spending. They will get through this. But, they will want the Boomers to accept the reality they built.
As far as the Alpo comment. I was more joking than slamming. As noted in an earlier post I don’t think we have to make massive changes to the system. We just have to accept that SS was invested in a 4% growth account – and, thus not expect a 6% promise. I think most can adjust.
29. Vinny Vidivici:
Excellent points. I would have never made millions had it not been the timing of changing professions in my early forties and going into stocks and bonds just when we went on the screaming run up. But I had faith in lower taxes (Reagan) and Laffer and their optimism….plus it didn’t hurt that the Boomers all started investing as the Greatest generation passed away and left their kids money.
Success is where preparation meets opportunity. Additionally I’d already had all the toys, a Lotus, and great money from the CIA & IBM years so I was ready to say whoa, let’s save save. From 22 to 36 I went all over the world on OPM ..it was dangerous but heck, someone had to do it and I didn’t care. It was us against Ivan and it was a kick.
Heck, all you young people out there the CIA is hiring like mad and the perks are great. All you have to do is stay alive in very hostile environments usually with only your wits…or you can go into the Operations Directorate and get a gun and shoot at people…Churchill said it, “There’s nothing as exhilerating as to be shot at without result” …go for it. Sorry, no old guys, unless you are fluent in any ME language.
GenY outnumbers the Boomers. In a few years, there will be more GenY eligible voters than Boomer voters. Those GenY voters will have also had a chance to learn first-hand what payroll taxes feel like. Comments on this thread amply demonstrate the lack of love between Boomers and GenX. GenXers will vote to abolish SocSecurity benfits, even if it costs them. They’re pragmatic enough to know they won’t get anything when their time comes anyway.
In ten years, the dignified older generations will be gone. We’ll no longer see a stooped gentleman shuffling along with his walker and wonder if he was at Normandy or Bastone or Guadalcanal. In ten years, GenY will be fed up with paying for Boomer’s retirement, and the parade of sanctimonious geriatric boomers using their free time (paid for by those payroll taxes) to hector the young’uns will solidify their reputation as the Gratingest Generation. Everyone will realize the people collecting the checks are, on balance, annoying and responsible for leaving us a horrible mess. The Boomers squandered the family fortune, so to speak.
So, by 2020, I predict a GenX+GenY voting block will simply end Social Security. There will be some Elder Poverty program to provide food stamps (or Alpo), but the payroll tax will end and the SocSec checks will end. Tax policy will radiacally shift, favoring salary and generated revenue and disfavoring passive investment income. There will be a lot of work to be done, and the country simply won’t have the resources to pay people who aren’t doing it.
Unless of course we’re all too busy shooting one another by then to worry about taxes. That, of course, is the other alternative.
Habu,
I’ve seen the opposite end of what you’re talking about…i.e. the glories of individuals tromping around the world with no obvious means of support, who happened to rent a three bedroom apartment overlooking the square when the Orange Revolution went down in Kyev, etc. And the dude who did that? Schlumpy, completely unremarkable, with little apparent interest in all the lonely and gorgeous Ukrainian women Ukraine has to offer. In short, a geek, which I suppose is the idea. But I don’t think he is fooling anyone in Lubyanka. It’s become a sort of running joke with some folks I talk to, especially since this guy emailed from just inside Afghanistan next to Iran during the Georgia War that his next vacation stop was the deep heart of Persia, and then he went on to vacation in Abkhazia shortly after the war ended there…perhaps his next stop is the Chinese border with North Korea.
On the flip side, I’ve heard of Americans getting booted out of Russia who have married Russian wives and settled lives in the country, simply because an NGO they worked for years before was used by one of your compadres as a “legend”. So there is always collateral damage in the spygame. One reason I stay the hell away from it even from time to time I have reminders that they take a look at me — and I look right back and smile.
Just doing my taxes, and among the paperwork was my annual social security statement, that says I would get $x if I turned 65 today and retired, and then warns (something like), “… subject to change, since by 2038 funding may be available for only 78% of promised benefits”.
US birthrate is of course heavily boosted by (mostly Hispanic)(legal and illegal) immigrants, bring in (young) immigrants is another way to keep the ball rolling, at least a few more years.
As is productivity.
But then we get into distributional issues, as discussed several threads ago.
Hope and change, folks, and the change is pretty much guaranteed, just the direction is in question.
32. JMH:
Predict away hombre.
My turn.
You’ll be working for Chung King for $25 a month and be standing in line for your rice ration. And you’ll still be more bitter than ever.
You go ahead and get that voter registration going ’cause even though it’s pocket change I’m already spending Social Security money from your pay check….thanks. And at 62 I can bench press 300 pounds and hike in Montana 15-20 miles a day, fire my weapons in the V-ring consistently. Then I go drive my Birkin…yeah it’s a toy but the SS payments keep it in tip top shape.
See, the Boomers made 60 the new 40 and my doctor tells me I’m closer to a 35 year old.
Life is good.
JMH,
It will only go there (Xer/Yer voting revolt) if the Boomers cannot add and subtract.
With the real estate downturn I think many have learned the value of mathematics. If the Boomers try to retain 6% growth benefits in the 4% plan they funded than they will be very disappointed. The Xers have no confidence in government and bureaucratic organizations. They (and, I mean me) will simply (but legally for the most part) Go Gault and watch from the sidelines. There are many ways to legally avoid tax increases – some of which may make you a very rich motor homing geezer in your time.
As far as the GenYers revolting – I don’t think so. They may – now that information flows and cannot be secured (hidden). But, GenYers generally believe in the social construct. To me, it looks as if folks in their early 20s seem to believe in government. So, I don’t think there will be a revolt. Especially one with guns and things…
But, there will be friction between Boomers who want a Social Security funded motor home and GenXers who will be asked to pay the loan month to month.
It will be fun to watch.
Me, I’ll be watching from the sidelines. Goin’ Gault baby, goin’ Gualt. Not in the sense of the book – in the sense that any increase tax or fee demand by the Feds/State/City will be seen as unfair. I have plenty of space in my 401(k) contribution limit to keep my taxes at their current level.
Anyone want to buy my geezer sail boat in twenty years???
Habu, Sorry, no old guys, unless you are fluent in any ME language.
How about Russian?
Funny, I hated it during my school years. Naturally, it was a mandatory language of the occupier. Everyone pretended to be learning it. In my case it was the opposite, I pretended not learning it, because it was easy to learn it without much effort.
But that was 4 decades ago. Should have forgotten it, as I never used it in any meaningful capacity.
Now it comes very handy. Won’t elaborate, but just say I will capitalize on it handsomely.
One never knows…
But back to the point about ME languages. Oddly, if you are fluent in Arabic and you are Israeli of Jewish, they won’t usually hire you. They rather hire Ahmed whose loyalties are questionable.
CIA… not what it used to be. Infiltrated by leftists, it’s designed kickass sinisterity turned into sinisterity of another kind as the focus is shifting from foreign enemies to perceived domestic enemies.
Darn closing tag after the first sentence. I should know better.
Boghie,
Interesting thought. My gut tells me it won’t be enough, but I don’t trust my gut. I’ll see if I can gin up some more meaningful analysis.
However, the big deficit is not in Social Security. If it were just SocSec payments we were talking about, there wouldn’t be a problem. The big money is in Medicare.
Here is Richard Fisher’s speech, the one I referred to above (Vinni- you’re in it, but they misspelled your name
:
http://www.dallasfed.org/news/speeches/fisher/2008/fs080528.cfm
In the speech, Fisher points out that the unfunded liability for Social Security is about $14T. A lot of money, but not enough to break the bank.
But Medicare is more like $86T, and that is enormous. And this is the unfunded liability – it is the amount the system needs in addition to the payroll taxes, membership fees, and co-pays. And note that Medicare Part D – the new prescription drug plan signed by Bush – creates an unfunded liability 1/3 larger than all of Social Security.
So, I’m not so sure that it’s the RV vacations that will be the sticking point. It will be the second hip replacement and third coronary artery stent.
Of course, after health care is nationalized – with the support of AARP – there will be no need to worry about this, since those procedures will be banned.
Cheers,
L3
35. Habu,
Enjoy the ‘guaranteed’ benefits ‘Chung King JMH’ and ‘Burger King Boghie’ provide you at $25/month.
That won’t even keep you in Alpo.
From the sound of it, you will be about 74 when JMH and I put on our little fast food cap (recycled material) and earn a buck a day. I’ll be in my mid 50′s and Chung King JMH will be in his mid 30′s (if he is an early Millenial). While Boomers like you may still see well and shoot straight I would be concerned about the vast majority of your generational cadre. I don’t see too much footage of 60′s era 20 somethings living the clean life – and if memory serves most don’t seem to have much respect for CIA and Warriors. More experienced in protesting and living in trees.
So, the end result is that you might actually have to spend some of your personal retirement resources on things like food and shelter and medical care.
Oh, the humanity…
Predictions… hmmmp.
I don’t think any of the BC’er can imagine what kind of shithole we are in. I mean collectively, no matter whether you live in Antarctica.
After the next decade, the world will be a vastly different place. Any [uncertain] certainities you may have will do a diddly squat for ya, if you manage to be one who may be pondering about them.
Well, the main problem with GenX is that they are split into two camps. One that worships the Boomers and wants to be just like them. Obama is in this camp (although you can argue is 1967 makes him a 2nd wave Boomer or cusp of GenX. GenX is traditionally defined as 1961-1981).
The other camp hates the Boomers, and views them as self-centered narcissists that got divorced and dumped or aborted their kids when their marriages didn’t fit their lifestyle.
Oh, I forgot to point out that I expect some of Social Security’s problems will be taken care of by government health care that will mandate euthanasia for those old enough to no longer be financially worth keeping alive.
Habu, ya might re-read your response and ask yourself whether it’s you or me running the voter registration drive to build a “End-it-don’t-mend-it” coalition on Social Security.
Here’s the problem. There are only three avenues open to us on Social Security. One, tax the hell out of everyone working to continue paying current benefit levels to retirees. Even if younger generations had a more sympathetic view of the Boomers, that just won’t be sustainable given the damage done to our economy. Take a look at Allen Barton’s “Holy Bleeping Expletive” PJTV Financial review. The numbers just don’t work. Like I said before, there’s too much work to be done rebuilding our economy – as a society we can’t afford to have all the money going to people who aren’t doing the work. Retired Boomers won’t be doing the work.
Option Two is to continue mortgaging the country to China. Assuming they will continue to be willing and able to buy. They’ve got a huge population implosion coming themselves. Their massive savings have been an effort to deal with their looming people shortage, but as Europe is finding out, money is a poor substitute. China may decide their national savings binge isn’t going to work and try something different (frightening to contemplate what that might be). And even if they are willing to continue funding us, if you think my 23 year old nephew, who could probably bench press you and your 300 lbs, is going to work for Chung Kim so you can have a cushy retirement, you’ve made a slight miscalculation. Even so, given the numbers, we don’t have enough equity left in the old Homestead to fund the Boomers all the way through their retirement, especially once the credit rating slips. You should fear the country being forclosed on by China more than letting GenX supervise your heart medication. China will have enough of their own old people. If they have to start trimming budgets over here as part of the takeover, they’re not going to need blue-haired Americans.
Option three is to repudiate Social Security obligations. Truth is, at some point, we are going to have to repudiate something. We won’t be able to afford the payments on everything we’ve obligated ourselves to. Nothing bitter or emotional about that analysis, the numbers are dispassionate. So, we’ll have to choose, and the country will choose to screw the old folks, because they won’t be part of the future.
Limited “mend-it-don’t-end-it” measures won’t work. Means-testing might have worked years ago, but the recent market crash plus Obama pouring gasoline on the embers will destroy whatever private savings most Boomers had. You may be the exception, but if we start means testing, most of your generation will fail the test. Not enough savings to be had there. Same with raising the retirement age, unless we’re willing to raise it to 107. Any sort of “mending” of Social Security that actually solves the problem will be indistinguishable from ending it.
If you’ve got another way to solve the problem, let me know.
Boomers will never get over themselves. The only question is whether the rest of the country can organize itself well enough to resist their self-indulgence.
My test is whether or not we start means-testing Social Security and move retirement age closer to the average lifespan. SS is all about the boomers now.
On population, growth rates are crashing everywhere except Africa and the Islamic world. If women get control of their lives there, birth rates will start looking like they do in the rest of the world, i.e., population will move into decline (unless decreasing death rates via our increasing medical chops offsets declining birth rates.)
I did not mean to get into a gloom’n'doom kinda mode. Mean to convey that if you are ready to discard any assumptions you have at a moment’s notice, you may have a good chance to ponder about uncertainities, one nice summer day of 2020.
But there are 2-3 years ahead that are “things as usual”, and that is a good news.
EvilDave,
Most consider the generational breakdown to be:
Boomer: 1944 – 1963 (End of WWII)
GenX: 1963 – 1984 (Kennedy Assassination)
GenY: 1984 – 2001 (Morning in America)
Artist: 2001 – (9/11)
At least in the Howe and Strauss “4th Turning” model. Not perfect, but makes far more sense than just adding 20 to the generation before it.
That makes President Obama (born in 1960) the tail end of the Boomer generation. He comes very, very close to the archetype of a Boomer (Prophet). So did ‘W’. So did Clinton. Gingrich. bin Laden. Putin. David Petraeus (but his pragmatism kinda seems Nomad Xer).
You need all generational archetypes to deal with the problems at hand…
Habu,
I wouldn’t say – and I don’t think others are claiming – that the future implosion of SocSec-Medicare is a good thing. If it happens, it would be a disaster.
But the numbers are the problem here. Boomers have been promised more than GenX+GenY can afford. It’s not a matter of whether they should pay, it’s a matter of whether they can.
At $100T, we’re talking about a current, present value, unfunded liability that is 6 times the GDP of the US – $330,000 for every American man, woman, and child. If we try to keep benefits where they are, there will have to be a massive increase in taxes. But at a certain point, people will simply stop working the marginal hour – this is what happens in high-marginal-tax places like Sweden. The government doesn’t collect more taxes; people simply take more vacation. After all, if the difference between working and lazing about is $5/hour, more people will laze about.
Benefits, therefore, will have to be cut. As I said above, it’s not fair, but it’s the same process that is going on right now in Detroit. Auto workers will get their post-retirement pension and health benefits slashed. There’s simply not enough money to go around, and they will have to share in the pain. If they don’t, the industry will completely collapse, and then they could get nothing (they might get something from the PBGC, but it would probably collapse as well if the entire auto industry imploded).
Finally, I don’t think this is a Boomer vs. GenX thing. Largely, it is a problem that was created by The Greatest Generation – people like LBJ and Wilbur Mills, the man who championed cost-of-living increases. What they didn’t anticipate was that Boomers would live a lot longer, and the benefit levels TGG chose would bankrupt the system.
GenX doesn’t really have the electoral throw-weight to make changes to this system. Rather, it will be GenY who plays the “bad guy” here.
And, contrary to your assertion, it was not GenY who put Barack Obama in the White House. It was GenY. Voters under 30 (the vast majority of which are GenY) went for Obama 68-32. This was the crucial swing demographic; Kerry carried this age segment in 2004, but only by a 55-45 margin.
Cheers,
L3
Read somewhere, and it may be slightly different. If somebody has a good link to the table that would be nice to see.
The “index of pain” says by 2040 or so that our obligation to the SSI fund will be on the order of a QUADRILLION dollars should they exist at that time. 1000 trillions. This is also based on pre-0bama spending. That my friends is getting into real money…
And if I hear one more supposed greatest generation person who says that if they hadn’t saved the world back in the big one… I am gonna heave. The truth is you did it to save your own ass. Any unintended consequences to the following generations is just that unintended.
Jim
LeoIII;
“And, contrary to your assertion, it was not GenY who put Barack Obama in the White House. It was GenY. Voters under 30 (the vast majority of which are GenY) went for Obama 68-32. This was the crucial swing demographic; Kerry carried this age segment in 2004, but only by a 55-45 margin.”
Damn, the facebook generation…
Also I think you meant GenX not genY in your first sentence.
Jim
@ 47. Leo Linbeck III:
And, contrary to your assertion, it was not GenY who put Barack Obama in the White House. It was GenY.
We all make them. Presuming “it was not GenX who put Barack Obama in the White House.”
0: “… and you’ll have free health care, affordable housing… food stamps and free transportation… and jobs for everybody! Any questions?”
GenYer: “Well, what would we need jobs for?”
@ 48. JFSanders
The figure extrapolation is somewhat overblown, but to the consolation of the people living in that time, SSI won’t have any meaning.
JFS and 2×4,
Good catch – I did mean “GenX” in the first sentence. Damn spellcheck – it should read my mind!
Cheers,
L3
There is only ONE way out of the SS vise/ vice…
The age of attainment MUST go up.
This is already being done; it must be accelerated.
The problem has nothing to do with how this or that generation regards the others. It’s all about what percentage of the average life is spent working vs being raised & retired — the years of dependency.
Since we’re keeping ourselves in school ever longer, the years of dependency have been growing at both ends.
We need to stop shunting every child through college — making college the new high school. Something like the German trades education approach would be very worthwhile — especially in economically depressed areas.
As the new medical miracles compound it will become obvious to all that 65 will become the old 40. Hence the age of attainment must rise in step with this shift.
It is from this demographic shift that the out-years can be squared with the numbers. The contributing pool will grow and the dependent pool will shrink.
Of course, most of the above is moot since H is going to crash the economy and the currency before his term is out.
H will bankrupt Leftism planet wide. He will be remembered.
2X4;
I am sure I read 1 quadrillion but am not sure it was by 2040. I can’t find that table on this computer!!! Dagnabit! It was a actuarial table from .gov
Jim
L3,
The one thing GenXers have over the next twenty years is income. They (me) will be in their maximum earning years. Me thinks they are not likely to part with it – more than the 30% (very middle class 25% tax bracket) I currently and willingly contribute to Social Security, Medicare, State and Federal Income Tax. I will even be a bit more generous as my income grows. But, there is a limit. For my income it is right here, right now.
Anyone looking at the Instapundit pictures of these ‘Tea Parties’? Do the folks look like they are in their 20s, 40s, or 60s? To me, they look to be in their 30s and 40s. That is, GenXers. Not too many yougins, not too many oldsters thinking the are 40. And, who are the ‘Gaulters’? Who do they seem to act like? If I were a member of the new dependent class I would not want this happening.
My advice – long term because you have decades to live – man up and vote yourself the benefits that can be afforded. Yes, the ones that have been paid for. Do it early so that time is on your side. Do it yourself so that the paying generations at least feel you were acting in everybodies interest.
Don’t wait till it must be done. At that point you will get a GenX President and a GenX Congress breaking eggs that must be broken. Anyone want to watch a GenXer rampaging through benefits and government spending programs – maybe one who just completed the sell off a bankrupt car company and the axing of thousands of employees Gecko style.
Not pretty.
We don’t have to go there – yet… Not quite in JMH’s camp on that.
“We need to stop shunting every child through college — making college the new high school. Something like the German trades education approach would be very worthwhile — especially in economically depressed areas.”
Hear! Hear! Something that I have been agitating for around here for a long time!
Jim
blert, JFSanders,
Have you seen the high school graduates lately?
My guess is that the elementary students of the 1950s could whip them in any academic or physical test available. Remember who they have been taught by. Many are not high school graduates in real terms.
They seem to need the seasoning of failure that college still can provide :-{
Here being my home town…
Jim
You need all generational archetypes to deal with the problems at hand…
It’s erie when you think about how perfectly the generations line up. Boomers, by being so insufferable, will make it easy for other generations to give them the shaft. GenX, by being so cynical will be willing give up their own Social Security benefits because they figure there won’t be anything left for them anyway. GenY, by being so community-focused, will lose patience with the “Me” generation and decide the Boomers aren’t part of the solution.
As an aside, GenY voted for Obama in large numbers, but they’re young and inexperienced. They’ll be getting a crash course in responsibility over the next few years. Plus, I don’t think Barack “I, me, my administration” Obama is going to wear well with a generation focused on “We, us, and our.”
GenX doesn’t really have the electoral throw-weight to make changes to this system. Rather, it will be GenY who plays the “bad guy” here.
Right. GenX essentially becomes the swing vote when GenY balances the Boomers in registered voters.
And I agree with L3 that the implosion of SocSec/Medicare isn’t a shiny, happy prospect. It sucks. But it’s inevitable at this point. Years ago, it could’ve been fixed. In this regard, I’ll blame the Boomers. When it came time for them to vote on FDRs Ponzi scheme, they decided to buy into it whole hog.
I look at it in much the same way I look at the pain Obama will cause the country over the next two to four year: regretable, but now inevitable, and so we’d better start thinking about how we contain and mitigate the damage.
We don’t have to go there – yet… Not quite in JMH’s camp on that.
As gloomy as I am on this subject, I’m glad that I’m not the optimist here. It would be a very nice surprise if things turned out better than I expect.
But my pessimism comes in part from the fact that it will be at least two years until we can stop government vandalism of the economy (the 2010 elections turning Pelosi and Reid out of power) and four years until we can start repairing the damage (a new POTUS). Productivity is the key to working (literally) our way out of this mess without repudiating any obligations, but our future productivity is being badly degraded by the political pygmies we manged to elect. Perhaps there’s a chance right now to effect a soft landing, but the window on that is closing and POR seem not the least bit interested.
JMH,
The Evil BusHitler warned the masses in 2000 that Social Security needed reforming. Then he staked a very important election (imagine a President Kerry) on the same thin in 2004. Then he tried to use the remnants of his political capital to reform it in 2005.
Much wailing and gnashing of teeth. Nothing done. The ‘Third Rail of Politics’ held fast. The Boomers wanted theirs and they wanted it bad. It wouldn’t become politically damaging till 2024 – when they would be out of the system, eh.
BusHitler stated that things would start going bad between 2008 and 2012.
I, a GenXer, have offered up my:
1. 20+ years of contributions – mine and the employer match
2. Half of my future contributions – mine and the employer match
3. All of the ‘growth’ in my Social Security Lock Box
4. And, all of my future benefits
To the Federal Government if they promise not to increase my income taxes, my payroll taxes, or my contribution in any way toward Social Security or Medicare and allow ME to invest the other half of future payroll tax contributions to MY retirement fund in MY name.
They have no control over it.
That is my very cynical deal.
JMH, I am not so inclined with the GenYers. Emotionally, they could not do that to the Boomers. They would get all civically minded and everything. Me. I would not recommend electing me as President anytime in the next twenty years or so – yuk, yuk… I will take care of my parents – yours, not so much…
It’s going to be a great adventure to see how the world ends. With a bang or will it be with a whimper. Cheer up, guys.
Its been clear since the beginning that Social Security was a Ponzi scheme, and that there is – and could not be – a trust fund. Its gets paid out of current tax revenue. Probably not 1 person in 10 understands that, however.
It would have been better years ago to have raised the retirement age and reduced the cost of living increase formula, and simultaneously aggressively encouraged private savings. But we didn’t. Lots of blame to go around, but most of it goes to the Democrats, who routinely raised the spectre of Republicans killing SS in every election for the last 40 years.
Even with all that, it was just barely possible to think that the economy might grow fast enough to pay that bill.
I expect we will see very modest increase in retirement age, more signficant reductions in cost of living calculations (because they are relatively complex and hard to get people emotional about, i.e. easier to hide politically), and much more aggressive means testing through tax clawbacks(approaching 100%). But assuming the economy doesn’t collapse, it can be made to work, sort of.
The real problem is Medicare. The liabilities are 10X or more those of SS. If you take ALL the profit out of ALL of the elements of the health care industry, it won’t even begin to cover this. Taxes simply can’t be raised enough to cover it. So care will be rationed, both explicitly (“you are denied dialysis” and implicitly (“the waiting time for that procedure is 14 months, sir”.
I think that is where the political friction will be.
If you want to save social security you have to save the economy. Those that say the recent stock market meltdown showed how horrible the privatization of Social Security would have been rather miss the point. In fact, contribution to the trust fund melted down also.
The health of Social Security 30 years from now depends on the health of the private economy now. If the economy doubles in size every 15 years than the problem will be much easier to handle than if it grows at 1 percent a year during that period. If we have low unemployment going forward, than retirees can work and pay taxes. Frankly, what’s best for Social Security is what is best for the American economy right now and it ain’t what the Democrats have planned.
Stimulating feelings of anger and resentment is how the Left acquires and keeps power.
I am about to watch a PBS Nature program on Frogs (the amphibian kind). Whatever have we done.
At the EOTWAWKI, Gen X will whimper, Gen Y will whine. The millenials wont notice, texting and listening to their iPods.
Us boomers will just shoot their ass.
Leo @47…
The PBGC is flat on its back already.
It seems that the ‘management’ decided in 2007 to shift out of those stale Treasury bonds and pile into emerging market equities, some real estate, etc.
Hence the fund has been crushed by currency swings and collapsed markets — a job well done!
GenXers (Washington, Greene, Grant, Sherman, Lee, Jackson, Patton, Rommel) don’t whimper.
GenYers (Revolutionary militia, Union/Confederate soldiers, dam builders, WWII grunts, Iraq/Afghan war veterans) don’t whine.
Boomers (Lincoln, FDR, Hitler, Stalin, Gingrich, Clinton, ‘W’) set the agenda and initiate massive change.
It’s the next generation (after the GenYers – those born after 9/11) who will be tempted by whimpering and whining. And, it will be a good time to do so. Things will be settled, but memories will be rough, eh…
None of you are addressing the issue.
WHY are Native Europeans, White Americans, Chinese in the coastal regions, and Japanese not having kids? While Muslim and Mexican immigrants, in the EU and US respectively, have many kids (none of whom have the least loyalty to their host nations, quite the reverse they HATE them and the current White majority).
Why?
Simple. Because women if given a choice will refuse to have kids early, in their twenties, instead pursuing various Alpha men and consumerism, “Sex and the City” as a lifestyle, what Kay Hymnowitz called the “New Girl Order,” and that means at most a designer eugenic yuppie baby through IVF sperm donors at age 39-45.
It’s as simple as that. Though Steyn fears PC attacks for saying it (the usual label of “misogynist” for speaking the truth).
And the truth is no “evil force” of Gramscian Marxist academics, communist subverters, or other “conspirators” caused this. It was inevitable as carpet bombing of cities was in WWII once Orville and Wilbur Wright got off the ground at Kitty Hawk.
Cheap, reliable contraception, anonymous urban living (no social censure for living like the Sex and the City characters), and rising incomes and status of women CREATED this. The only way it could have been avoided was a deliberate attempt to create new institutions and mores to counter-act this tendency.
Look at the English. Known throughout Europe’s history as congenital drunkards, in Samuel Johnson’s days, most of English people particularly in cities went about in drunken, gin-caused stupor. It was not uncommon to step over the passed out form of a 12 year old prostitute, as social mores and institutions collapsed in the movement away from rural areas into the cities. Wretchard could read accounts of London in the 1770′s and match it to the slums of Manila quite well.
The Victorians, starting in the 1830′s, deliberately created Victorian, straight-laced morality, with strict limits on boozing and sex, including substituting less powerful beer for the national drink of Gin, lots of church going, endless promotion of the nuclear family and joys of properly raising children, and brutal suppression of extra-marital sex.
All to deal with the abuses of the Georgian era. It was for the most part quite successful.
The West did not follow their example in the similar great post-War social migrations and upheaval, and so has paid the price. No we don’t have passed out twelve year old prostitutes even in fashionable areas of great cities, but we do have widespread sexual and social behaviors simply incompatible with the nuclear family and raising children.
It is THAT not economics, or government intervention, or the Welfare State, or Gramscian Marxist conspiracies, that caused the demographic collapse of the West. Give people absolute social freedom and this is what you get.
65. Herb:
Yes we’re reading today the arrogance of youth.
Youth is wasted on the young George Bernard Shaw
But you’re right on target which is where I usually am. Practice,practice,practice.
First off they have to live long enough to worry about collecting anything. Their being dismissive of the Boomer’s, the generation that created more wealth than all previous generations combined, filed more patents, educated more, gave more to charity, the list is long and distinguished.
X&Y Gens have yet to do anything close to what the Boomers did. They do cry more , whine more, and have sclerotic temper tantrums, but let’s see if they can even begin to duplcate what the Boomers and the Greatest Generation did. Their challenges they cry about, they don’t solve, and of course it’s always someone else’s fault.
And my G-d look what they did to music.
45. JMH
And even if they are willing to continue funding us, if you think my 23 year old nephew, who could probably bench press you and your 300 lbs,…blah,blah,blah
Tell ya what JMH. Drag your 23 year old cousin into the gym when he’s 62. Load the bar with 300 pounds and see what he does.
What a horrible attempt at a retort. I also notice you had to use a cousin. You didn’t mention yourself.
It really makes me mad to actually be able to do that though because it means I’ve spent too much time in a gym. I should have spent more time on the piano, now that’s a nice skill to have and I do regret not developing it more. But fighting in SE Asia, Angola, Rhodesia, and traveling to all of the continents on the planet spooking the Soviets before I turned 32 kept me a bit busy. Pushups travel, pianos don’t.
70. whiskey:
Very nicely put.
Give people absolute social freedom and this is what you get
Whiskey, you have a knack for spotting trends, but when it comes to your pet subject, you tend to generalize. A lot.
No, not all young women are in a deferenece mode, seeking scalps of alphas to tuck behind their belts. That segment is fairly specific and belongs to the urbanite leftist niveau. But this is not the case in flyover areas, at least not as much. The all US mean shows a static trend, but once you separate these environs, you get a different picture for each.
The young ladies in flyover country seek a decent young man, who is able to take on some responsibility. It is somewhat tough, because the artificial neoteny (disbursed in spades by the education biz and cultural demagogues) pushes the age of maturity of a young man towards 30 boundary.
The feminization (its radical ideology branch) wrecked the cultural norms and relegated young men to tolerable appendages, forcing them to ask a question: “What’s in it for me?” After surveying the landscape, a young man may come to a conclusion that “not much”. Only as they mature (later than their predecessors), many would find that the memes and reality do differ.
It is only a temporary situation, albeit the “temporary” may take a bit of time. The upcoming “interesting times” will certainly reshuffle the deck and people would seek the old but millennia tested patterns.
And thus spake Lixgrijgh: “Love each other an multiply”.
And then, Lixgrijgh looked again and saw the progeny. Not of those that did not heed his advice, nor those that did multiply but did not love each other. Only of those that understood, not because Lixgrijgh commanded, but because that was the truth.
What a horrible attempt at a retort. I also notice you had to use a cousin. You didn’t mention yourself.
Nephew, Habu, not cousin. Your eyes must be going. Happens when we get older. Carrots help.
I used a nephew because he’s the GenY, not me. It’ll be his generation that decides what becomes of your social security check. Doesn’t sound like you’re really counting on that to fund your ambles through Montana, but the rest of the Boomers better hope Boghie has a better take on GenY then I do. But that’s the 64 Trillion Dollar question, isn’t it? What will those 100 million GenY kids do when they grow up? They voted for Obama cause he was cool and promised them free stuff. We’ll see what they think when he hands them the bill.
Boghie;
“They seem to need the seasoning of failure that college still can provide :-{”
I see their seasoning coming just over the horizon. It is called Global Depression. And guess what? The Socialists have got the whole world to try the Roosevelt solution! Neat! Now everybody gets to stew in it for a decade or more.
They will come out of it and be just like my Grandmother did. Frugal, pessimistic, distrustful and very contemptuous of politicians.
Jim
whiskey, when has Japan ever held conservative attitudes toward sex? Something akin to Victorian standards, which you claim was a noble reaction to the frequent gin-fueled ravaging of 12-year-old hookers?
Shame would make them all better off, you believe. Well Japan didn’t trade sake for beer (sake has four to five times the alcohol content) and their religious customs include ritual Shinto sex festivals, along with non-orgy oriented gatherings too. The rate of sex crimes is nil (despite its appearance in fantasy porn) and their cultural respect of family – particularly elders – has remained absolute and unfaltering even after foreign nations rebuilt them from rubble.
Strange that the same groups who complain of neutering masculinity also seem to advocate for asexuality, as though it were different. It’s not. The world needs fewer mad-jealous betas. Not to appease them by imposing freakish standards on women.
Nothing like a Great Depression followed by the Great Stagflation to chear up a generation, eh…
It probably would have been a bit better to fight these culture wars to completion before we fight some external foe.
But, who knows, the schlumps we are fighting now might be just the opening act – eh.
Hope springs eternal.
I do think that Habu will be fine in the hinterlands of Montana. He can retire the days away and watch us little unwashed whiners make our way the best we can. At least I know I own a piece of his Birkin…whatever.
As far as generational greatness, if we can pay for Habu’s largess maybe he will give us a break. They sure didn’t pay for them – otherwise our freeways and educational system and our industry would not be in the delapidated state they are in now that the Boomers are out of the tax paying system. Maybe he will call it even if we all get together and legalize pot or something.
It probably would have been a bit better to fight these culture wars to completion before we fight some external foe.
Boghie, I think culture wars are what we do when we don’t have an external foe. Or maybe the better way to put it – using 4th Turning ideas – is that we’re constantly fighting an unending culture war, but we only really notice it when there isn’t an external fight to overshadow it.
The scary thing – as of right now – would be to lose this culture war. To live the life of a socialist. To find and line and wait in it. To ask the government to waive some regulation to buy your next house. To force Habu to buy recycled Birkenstocks rather than new.
I think the worm is turning.
That is the very nice thing about being part of a democratic republic…
habu, piano hobby + life on the road = harmonica (worked for me)
@ 79. Boghie:
I think you take Habu’s commentary too personally. Of course he generalizes, capiche?
I’d just like to point out that it is not a complete coincidence that fertility declined about the time that “The Population Bomb” was published.
An important part of the indoctrination of young people from that time on was the social irresponsibility of having more than two children. My wife and I lived through that, and even we felt a little guilty about having a third child. Now we wish we’d had a fourth.
But it was definitely not “the thing to do”. Yes, nearly foolproof contraception, ideological feminism and the ability to make career choices played roles as well; but I believe that underneath it all it was simply inconceivable (sorry
) that one would contribute to the horror of the population explosion that would ruin the planet.
TwoByFour,
Had too much of the good grape. I, too, was a bit tongue in cheek earlier regarding the Alpo comment that fired everybody up. Just making the point that what was is not always what will be. Everybody should look at the dynamics as they are. If everybody works together we can get through some bad times. Times that are just starting.
Anyway, as far as Habu claiming music greatness for the Boomers. I have to agree – in part. Beatles, Zeppelin, Who, CCR, VU, Jimi, Joplin, Temptations, Stones, Yardbirds, Cream, and many others. However, I think Disco has to be the ‘oh sh!t’ that changes everything. You just have to draw an X through the 70s. A decade best forgotten. However, the greatness of the mid-to-late sixty’s rock and roll is something that shall never rust away.
@ 84. Dr. T
I never bought it. Considering that there are finite resources (what is possible to produce season by season) the whole idea simply seemed preposterous to me.
On the other hand, several times in human history and prehistory, we came this close to extinction. I’d rather have a buffer.
E.Nigma (#3)
Your remark about going to the theatre and seeing the future of America prompts me to offer this:
http://www.devildogs.info/Alpha%20Company.htm
I just picked this at random, but it should go a long way toward restoring hope.
AD (Proud dad of Lcpl. Andrew B Battery 1/11)
… click on one of the platoon numbers to see some of the finest young men on the planet.
AD
Spengler, over at AsiaTimes, did an analysis, trying to find the correlatives of fertility. He found two. Adult Literacy, which is negatively correlated with fertility; and Religious Belief, which is positively correlated with fertility.
20+ years ago I used to worry about the low fertility rate for the US (~1.8 back then). Then I read a piece in which a reporter let slip an important piece of information. One American woman in five simply wasn’t having kids. I did the math (1.8/.8 = 2.25) and quit worrying. The part of our population that is European in character is dying out just like Europe. The “old-fashioned, bitter, Bible-clinging” part is doing just fine.
JG27+AD:/87; — thanks for that — great stuff! Take a look here:
(It’s the great Michael Barone essay so-called “Hard America, Soft America”)
Hey, Habu is starring in a commercial:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TVzStqf2TT0
whiskey#70
“Give people absolute social freedom and this is what you get.”
correction: When people misuse absolute social freedom this is what you get.
Freedom itself is inherently neither good nor bad, but it is a necessary precondition for the greatest kinds of good. Freedom misused generally devolves into freedom lost, captivity, misery, death. Freedom rightly used leads to more freedom, happiness, life and ultimately will take men (individually and collectively) to God.