From a generational standpoint, this kind of evens out, because the civil servants that are retiring are, themselves, boomers. "Hey Dick, let's get a few things straight!! The author Laurence J. Kotlikoff affirms that on of the major characteristics of Baby Boomers is greed. [18] Subsidized by the G.I. It's a bum rap, although he is noted as a world-class liar. ! Congressional Research Service. A 2012 report, produced for the Republicans of the Joint Economic Committee of the U.S. Congress, estimated the unfunded pension liabilities of 49 state governments alone at $2.8 trillion dollars. Fortunately, in 1996 the Chief Actuary of Canada reported that the Plan could not be sustained as it was. There is no growth in real wages and inflation is at record lows. For modern Russians, the conflict continues to provide the population with a nationalistic rallying call. Over 9 in 10 (91%) of this age group are registered to vote and 90% voted in the 2000 presidential election. Meanwhile, most cities in North America have underinvested in water and sewage systems for decades, and are now having to pony up big-time to repair ancient, leaking systems. Our deficit in 2016 is estimated at $37.1 billion. We've also lost ground in child vaccinations: the United States now ranks 84th in the world for measles immunizations and 89th for polio. In some respects we became a spoiled generation. Then came the Cold War and the Space race. And now that the bills are coming due, the boomers are looking for ways to renege on the promises theyve made, as Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker did when he tore up the retirement deals the state had with civil servants, and curtailed civil servant bargaining rights because (it seems to me) civil servant unions were better at negotiating than decades of elected officials. Marian Salzman: For 30 years, baby boomers dominated politics, culture. Infrastructure is probably the least sexy thing taxpayers are asked to pay for, but one of the most critical. "Salaries of Members of Congress: A List of Payable Rates and Effective Dates." Mass, forced labor was often utilized and there were between 10 and 11 million Soviet men returning to help rebuild along with 2 million Soviet dissidents held prisoner in Stalin's Gulags. Instead, we have sacrificed our children and their children so that we can have a better life. ! With boomers about to retire, I'm afraid that national priorities will be focused even more powerfully on the elderly rather than the young -- because it's the elderly who wield political clout. is no less economically burdensome than an I.O.U. Simply warning them that fiscal catastrophe looms may not be enough to bring them around. The story goes Durbin compared Social Security to a milk cow with 310 million teats and called senior citizens the greediest generation ever for their reliance on it. She also tells it like it is! The only way out is to reduce spending. "[5] The initials G.I. Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin defended the filibuster, claiming getting rid of it "would be the end of the Senate as it was originally . Stalin's scorched earth policy left its western regions in a state of devastation worsened by the advancing German army. No; they were just more than eight times greedier. 2) Alan Simpson left Congress at the age of 65. The same is true of defense spending, although we can no longer afford endless wars we can't win. But that same year, Medicare took effect to provide medical care for the elderly, and Social Security adjustments steadily reduced poverty among them. 1. That's right, sir. Per TPM: "We had the greatest generation," Simpson said. My Social Security payments, and those of millions of other Americans, were safely tucked away in an interest bearing account for decades until you political pukes decided to raid the account and give OUR money to a bunch of zero ambition losers in return for votes, thus bankrupting the system and turning Social Security into a Ponzi scheme that would have made Bernie Madoff proud 4. I originally wrote this in 2014, and got . And, of course, we expect to be gone when it comes time for succeeding generations to collect on health care. The Greediest Generation is a book about what happened as the largest generation in American history came to power: It shows how "old fashioned" values like saving, underconsuming, and . Greediest Generation. In aged care we recommended including the full value of the family home in the means test. No, it helped us not to be a drain on society but we are now being told we have to do with less and not benefit from any of the massive tax dollars we paid in. Countries such as Sweden have rolled back company and personal taxes to encourage investment and jobs in an economy that was going backwards. To redeem these IOUs, the government would have to: 1) raise taxes; 2) cut spending; or 3) borrow an equivalent amount of money on the open market at a time when U.S. government debt is at the highest peacetime level in history. The Social Security mess was created by the Greatest Generation and the Boomers were left holding the empty bag.. And this is not to imply that other generations are or were angelic in comparison to the boomers, because thats not true, either. The International Monetary Fund recently computed a similar sized fiscal gap. "Bowles, Simpson to Head Debt Commission." "[2] The term was further popularized by the title of a 1998 book by American journalist Tom Brokaw. Always mean what you say ! No one knows, but they easily run into the trillions of dollars. Don't expect any sympathy, Trumpy. This Montana Senior Nailed It! Once we recognize the crushing burden the current system will place on our kids and grandkids, well see that reforming government spending programs (including entitlement programs)on our backs, not on our kidsis the only way to go. A person earning $80,000 who cannot afford a home pays taxes to support an aged pensioner in a $3 million family home . But the number of Gen Xers has ticked up over the last few Congresses, from 16 in the 115th to 20 in the current session. As of 2003, the share of elderly below the poverty line had fallen by two-thirds to 10 percent -- representing a huge national success. Learn more in our Cookie Policy. What cuts in YOUR retirement and health care benefits are you proposing in your disgusting deficit reduction proposal, or, as usual, have you exempted yourself and your political cronies? Pope Francis Orders White Women to Have Children with Muslim Migrants-Fiction. 1. Here's a response in a letter from PATTY NYE from Illinois .. No one asked me blame those corrupt politicians! They see a deck stacked against them by the greediest generation in Australian history: self-satisfied with its wealth, loath to pay its taxes, happy to saddle the youngsters with eye-watering . But this is the choice we've made. [7] Strauss and Howe use the birth years 19011924. "Al Simpson Speaks Out Against Debt Committee Critics, Political Climate." German cities and towns were devastated by Allied bombing campaigns. Its the same with any system in America. Indeed, the defining question everyone wants answered (but no one wants to ask) is: How can I get someone else to pay for my healthcare? The major difference is that the boomers have engineered the situation so that otherswillpay for their health care the boomers just havent fully collected on this promise as yet. "The elderly are retired, and it's easier to get them to go to rallies or write their congresspeople," notes Heather Boushey of the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington. [6]Were the CEOs of 2010 more than eight times better than the CEOs of 1980? That home eventually passes tax free to the descendants. Japanese cities, towns, and villages were devastated by Allied bombing campaigns. Wagner, a likely 2018 candidate for governor . Instead, the finger prints of the so-called `greatest generation' are all over it. Yet today Torontos traffic gridlock is rated as being among the worst in the developed world, even worse than that for New York City or Los Angeles. [37], As children, members of this generation came of age during Stalin's rise to power. But as one commentator remarked centuries ago, we get the government we deserve. by senior futurist Richard Worzel, C.F.A. Despite the hardships, historians note that literature, arts, music, and cinema of the period flourished. A number of popular film genres, including gangster films, musical films, comedy films, and monster films attracted mass audiences. stamped U.S. Treasury Bond. So how large is the U.S. fiscal gap? Members of this generation are known as "Great Patriotic War" veterans, such as poet Yuri Levitansky who wrote about the horrors of the war and Vasily Zaitsev, a war hero who would later be detained for two years as a victim of the post-war atmosphere of paranoia. We did it, and we did it deliberately, not caring what the long-term costs would be, or who would bear those costs. Hence, the real fiscal problem facing the country is 20 times larger than the one weve been publicly acknowledging. The recent proposal by the co-chairs of President Obamas bipartisan deficit commission would, unfortunately, make only a modest dent in our nations humongous credit card bill. . During the past few months, economists Thomas R. Saving of Texas A&M, Edward P. Stringham of Fayetteville State University, and I have been working with IT developers at the California-based PJ Institute to develop a Web-based application we call the Personal Financial Impact Projector. The study found that the government faces a present value "fiscal gap" -- the excess of expected payments over expected revenues -- of $51 trillion. The commission's proposal for eliminating the nation's $13.8 trillion debt, which included components such as increasing taxes and gradually raising the retirement age for Social Security to 69 years, prompted an "unprecedented amount of flak" from opponents, to which Simpson responded by referring to modern Americans as the "greediest generation" (although he tempered his remarks by saying he felt America had more "patriots than selfish people"): "I've never had any nastier mail or [been in a] more difficult position in my life," said the 79-year-old Simpson. The sad truth is that there are not nearly enough bridges to nowhere in the budget to close the fiscal gap. In 1980, a typical American CEOs pay was 42 times that of an average blue-collar workers pay. The first member of their generation to be elected president, John F. Kennedy, began a Space Race against the Soviet Union, and his successor, Lyndon B. Johnson, further promoted a controversial "Great Society" policy. One bridge collapsing through neglect is a local problem, but having 75,000 others in the same risk category can only be attributed to a deliberate policy of neglect. In the United States, members of this generation came of age, were children, or were born during the Progressive Era, World War I, and the Roaring Twenties; a time of economic prosperity with distinctive cultural transformations. But Simpson said that while every interest group that testified before his committee agreed that the mounting federal debt is a national tragedy, they would then talk about why government funding to their area of interest shouldn't be touched. This ability to freely label government receipts and payments in alternative internally consistent manners renders the governments cash flows meaningless from the perspective of economic theory and is called the labeling problem in economics. We cut off other people in traffic, because we dont care whether its our turn or not, and text and phone while we drive, putting other peoples lives at risk. . They also experienced much of their youth with rapid technological innovation (e.g., radio, telephone, automobile) amidst growing levels of worldwide income inequality[9][10][11] and a soaring economy. Indeed, they are more burdensome, because Congress has, explicitly or implicitly, promised to pay these benefits off in real (purchasing power) terms. 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