Blaming the Boomers?!! :-)
Why not? Some of us ELECTED a few of these Congressional “maroons!” 
I was really AMUSED tonight to read “Boomers to blame for debt crisis?” on CNN’s home page of the U.S. Edition, followed by”
“Baby boomers will have paid less into the Social Security system than they are expected to take out. So is this group of 80 million aging Americans to blame for the nation’s shaky economic system?”
The article (by Ed Hornick) itself goes on to say: “The answer is not so simple.”
Well, it seems pretty damn (sorry!) simple to me! 😉 The argument, that the biggest “flock of sheep” in U.S. history has not provided enough wool and is somehow responsible for the mismanagement of the flock AND the business is simple, indeed! Simply preposterous!
David Cork, a demographer, Canadian businessman, and author of the book, “The Pig and the Python” is quoted:
“It’s not because the boomers are a nasty generation. It’s just that there’s a lot of us, and we have a tendency of wanting to get it our own way,” he added. “I think we’ve been very successful at that. We’ve created great wealth, but we are looking at it at a time when you have to pay the piper.”
Sorry, Mr. Cork – the Boomers have been paying the piper their entire lives (maybe Cork is one of the pipers?). The “great wealth” that we have created has been siphoned off by the top 1% of income earners, the only group to have made substantial economic gains since 1980 (the Reagan Administration) and by other entities, like the Big Oil corporations that I wrote about last night.
It’s pretty easy to figure out what happened. As with any OTHER criminal enterprise… just “Follow the Money!”
Myers-Briggs “Thinking-Judging” personality types (which comprise upwards of 90% of upper management in companies) are generally unable to take responsibility for their own actions and tend to require scapegoats. Like selfish little children who have never learned to “play well with others” (and have never been punished, only REWARDED for their failure to do so!), these folks in corporations and in CONGRESS have almost “worn out their index fingers” by pointing at others to place blame.
The article continues:
“Still, as a generation, they will have paid less into the Social Security system than they are expected to take out. According to a report from the Social Security and Medicare Board of Trustees, the Social Security system is expected to be solvent until about 2037 — largely because of the surplus in the Trust Fund — even though the payroll taxes flowing in stop being enough to cover the expenses flowing out in 2017.”
The demographics that now seem to baffle Congress and stymie Big Business have been PRETTY OBVIOUS FOR A LONG TIME! (Sorry to “shout.”) I wrote about them MYSELF (no, I’m not a demographer) in the very early days of this blog in 2007 and again in August of 2010, when it became known that, in addition to Boomers becoming older, BIRTH RATES were falling! (There is a reference to CEO pay during the Great Recession as well, in the latter blog. Note added August 08, 2011: No, it did not go down or stay the same.)
Gee, you would think that if a little old blogger like me would notice these things, the people WHOSE JOBS it is to notice such things WOULD TOO!
Don’t get me wrong! The CNN article includes a bit of rational thought, this time from Jerry Shereshewsky, 65, the self-described “chief grown-up” at the firm GrownUpMarketing, who blames, not his own Baby Boomer generation, but Congress.
(If we were forced to go through BOTH houses of Congress and find “chief grown-ups” or “responsible adults,” would we have any luck? Oh, and have we already forgotten Wall Street?)
“It was not a secret that this largest cohort in American history was going to get older every year,” he said. “The fact that Congress has not done a very good job of keeping up with what is really happening in the world: life expectancy, better medical care. You give people a lot of cake and ice cream, they’re going to eat it.”
He continues:
“If you want to look through the telescope and say who should be getting beaten up here a little bit, I would say every member of the legislative branch for the last 30 years should be taken outside and spanked, because they did really stupid things,” he said. “Why did they increase these benefits? They get votes. Why don’t they raise taxes? They’re afraid someone’s not going to vote for them.”
David Certner, legislative policy director for the AARP, says:
“The problem we’re in today was caused by things we’ve done in the last two years, in particular engaging in two wars that haven’t been paid for in any way, shape or form — as well as the fact that we’ve had a significant drop in revenues partly as a result of our changes in the tax laws.”
Yes, wars are very “expensive,” in all sorts of ways. (Wars usually boost the economy. What kind of incompetence is required to run TWO wars and NOT boost the economy?) And some Republicans in the House of Representatives (Who elected these folks? I think that the electorate only meant to vote the incumbents OUT! It’s too bad that we can’t do that and leave the seats empty! 😉 ) are still arguing to continue those tax cuts for the top 2% of income earners and to continue those government subsidies for an oil and gas industry that seems to be doing very well on its own….
But don’t blame the Boomers, or we’ll be voting you out of Congress and camping out in Washington, D.C.; we’ve done BOTH before…!
-Bill at
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