Nearly all of the charts in the article are of things that will go up at a compound rate, naturally.
On that basis, I’m not strongly interested in reading the text. If you don’t understand that there are more books written and scanned in to Google the later in year of publication you go, and you’re basing your conclusion on the total number of book references by year, then you’re an idiot.
The opinions of idiots aren’t worth paying attention to.
Thanks, doreen, you raise some good points. I was going to make the excuse that family reunions are not what they used to be because some of the older generation have passed on, but indeed we are now that generation (I don’t necessarily mean you – lol – I mean me!). So I think just in terms of Christmas family get-togethers the real problem is perhaps that extended families are not as cohesive as they once were, and tend to be more geographically separated. I have lovely nieces and nephews that I rarely see except on special occasions, and they have kids of their own that I barely even know. Whatever the cause of this, it’s certainly not malice by baby boomers, who are saddened by it!
Because it takes more than 5 years but less than 40? Obviously?
Yeah! And they aren’t paying for it! Nor are they doing the proper thing and drawing less from the Treasury! Shocking!
Don’t tempt me.
Lucky for you, I got enough fuel in the hate tank for the both of you.
Yeah? Did any of them get the label “Great” attached to them? If you weren’t alive in the Great Depression, don’t try to one-up Millennials on bad job markets.
Millennials, you mean. Wealthy millennials, of course, not the retirees. The “only sane way” to correct the old people taking too much money is to increase the burden they place? Perhaps old age has taken its toll, because this young mind can think of at least one more way.
The ones having to pay for old, useless people?
I’m referring to the longest period in US history without a recession, and record-low unemployment, both of which Boomers were poised to take advantage of, and Millennials are not.
State YOUR case. What the hell are you talking about? “It’s actually Millennials, not Baby Boomers or Gen Xers who are the most responsible savers.” Boomers are broke.
Yeah, sure, let’s just start payments later. Later, being a comparative word, meaning more for Boomers, less for everyone else. That’ll fix everything. Just keep shoveling it in to the Boomers, and if anyone else has a problem with that, they can just take less. Problem? What problem?
Heard of it? No, no, no, you’re confused. I’m the Millennial. I’m the one who knows it won’t even exist when I’m retired. You have me confused with Boomers, who saved about a tenth of what they needed to, despite a lifetime of good fortune during which to do it.
Yeah, totally sensible, if you think the problem is that Millennials aren’t paying enough and Boomers aren’t getting enough. Tooootally sensible.
“The” article? You think it’s a novel claim?
It’s such a popular topic, there exists meta-commentary on it. How many different arguments would you like?
The key factor of the Reagan/O’Neil agreement on Social Security was that boomers would be the first generation that would pay not merely for the retirement of current retirees but for their own as well. So, yeah, we’ve done our part on that score.
But beyond that, I would like to introduce you to a concept of Kurt Vonnegut’s:
“Baby Boomer” seems to meet the criteria.
And… this thread is over.
One very real problem with “starting Social Security later” is that “older” workers are being forced out of the job market now when they’re still to young for SS. Have a later start year for benefits you make that problem worse.
Wait…a minute. One of the reasons I couldn’t save anything was because, as I was raising children (a thing you have to do by a certain age or not at all) I was also paying into Social Security and Medicare, to take care of previous generations, and there was just nothing left. Housing was expensive, because there were more of us who needed it than ever before so there was competition, so prices went up. Because the prices went up, most of my generation had to be two-income families, even while raising children. Because more people were working, there was more competition for jobs. Of course, there were more jobs, but not a lot more GOOD jobs. This is squandering a great economy? Of note, I graduated from college into the worst job market since the Depression. Wage and price controls, all right? So prices weren’t going up, but nobody was getting hired and nobody was getting raises. And there were more people graduating from college than ever before.
I must say, I have heard of the demise of social security, and the reasons for it, for most of my life, and I always figured yeah, I’ll pay into it all these years and they’ll take it away just as I get to the point where I could collect it. And that seems to be what you are proposing.
Also, I should note that three out of four of my sons were out-earning my husband and me by the time they were in their mid-20s. I don’t mean they were earning more in their mid-20s than we did when we were in our 20s. I mean they were earning more in their 20s than we were, at the same time. (Technically, two of them are not millenials. But also technically, my step-daughter, who also out-earned her father, is also a boomer.) So much for “a lifetime of good fortune.”
I know a bunch of people in my age group who are still working long past the age when they could have retired. Taking jobs away from younger people! Is that what you want?
But by far the most hurtful thing here is accusing Boomers of voting for Trump. Really? Not any of them in my peer group, that’s for sure.
No. Consider the two charts from the article that I mentioned.
During the 18 years from 1981 to 1999, professional income increased at an average 4.5% annual rate; while the corresponding growth rate for high school graduates was 0.1%. That’s Zero with a Z.
During the 36 years from 1972 to 2008, U.S. population increased at a 1% annual rate. Incarcerations increased at an average 5.5% annual rate.
If I have a beef with my fellow boomers, it’s that we didn’t value education enough during our college years and we continue to vote Republican. Trump won our age group 52-45 and that shows a continuing poor understanding of how the country should and could work.
I will partly excuse some of my brethren by noting that good paying blue collar jobs were still plentiful as we came of age and too many of us were unable to see that this could not last.
We also came of age during a terrible and pointless war, high inflation (not many of us here have experienced that) and a poor economy overall. The computer revolution bailed the country out by increasing productivity but it left many boomers unprepared to take advantage of the new paths forward.
Yeah, a lot of us (I’m speaking generally here) did a crappy job saving for retirement. But Social Security is not in the least bit of danger unless you keep voting for the GOP and their war machine.
Why are they being forced out? Their productivity is falling and they refuse to take a pay cut. That’s the mentality honed by a lifelong of privilege.
The Boomers are most definitely not paying for their own retirement. Perhaps you believe the SS payments were set aside instead of replaced by IOUs. The Boomers racked up and tremendous national debt under relative peacetime.
I’m not going to say some people aren’t less productive- but you need to understand that 1) life doesn’t end at 40 and 2)age discrimination exists.
My husband is in outside sales - a field where productivity is easily measured. The fact that he and a few other Boomers are the top five salesmen at their company does not spare them from comments about “ the stable is old” and “we need new blood” . And yes, you might think they should get out of the way so your contemporaries can take their job at half the pay - but you, too, will be in your fifties or early sixties someday. Think you’ll have saved enough to stop working at 50?
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No if they are outperforming the youngsters I wouldn’t get rid of them. I would pay them to teach the youngsters. If business is as greedy as everyone says, why would their greed be put on hold to get rid of the older folk?
And all kinds of comments will be made about everyone at a workplace. That is not something to worry about.
It wasn’t like we had a lot to say about it at the time, but the deal was made and should be honored. Surely you don’t advocate government reneging on it, especially since it’s not like we can get our youth back or anything.
Perhaps you believe that boomers only exist in the US. Here in Canada, the contributory public pension plan (different from the non-contributory universal entitlement funded by general revenue) is not only solvent but generating investment returns that most of us only wish we were getting on our own investments, so it has a solid long-term future despite the numbers of us retired boomers.
So if you’re blaming boomers, there’s a fundamental flaw in your argument.
OTOH, one thing we don’t have here is Republicans. You know, the kind who’d love to entirely dismantle social security almost as badly as they want to dismantle Obamacare. So maybe you’re terribly confused about who to blame for the woes you describe.
I made no argument that it was a novel claim in my post. You’re debating against a position that I did not take.
You have not argued against the position which I did take, which was that the article was written by someone who is stupid.
It may well be that the baby boomers were in ascendancy during one of the worst periods of American politics. That article does not prove it. Another article might, written by someone better. If one of the ones you posted makes a compelling argument then feel free to tell me which one I should look at.
But that argument needs to be more than just “the baby boomers are in ascendancy during one of the worst periods in American politics”. Unless they provide a cause, like that the baby boomers were educated using new math or whatever, while previous and later generations weren’t, then there’s no actual connection to the baby boomers. There’s nothing about them - their education, their upbringing, whatever - to say that they have been made bad in some way.
Rome was on a downward course for centuries before it finally collapsed. Blaming the final generation of Romans subsequent to the collapse is probably not correct. It’s the ones at or just past the peak who are to blame.
The only blame the people at the tail end get is for not identifying the issue and restoring things to the way that they had been when the country ran better. They didn’t restore the Republic, they continued trying to be an empire.
The US, similarly, is continuing to try to be a democracy instead of a republic. Unless we roll that back, it’s all downhill.
No.
We’re also refusing to shuffle off to the nursing home, planning to live in our homes till we die, thus exacerbating the housing shortage for millennials who will have to keep living in their parents’ basements. 
The deal that was made had no guarantee. I’m sorry that’s a bad deal.
Maybe I’m not. I thought we were talking about American Boomers, who racked up huge govt debt and failed to save for retirement. This was very much a bipartisan movement.
With respect to climate change, I don’t give a fuck whether I’ll be dead or alive to see the worst of it. But my son could live to see the beginning of the 22nd century*. it will affect his life in a big way. I care about that a hell of a lot more than I care about me.
I just wonder why more people don’t look at it that way.
*That would be A.D. 2101. You have no chance to survive, make your time.