perfidy

Apparently Ross and I agree on something. (Actually, not as rare as our comments section would have you believe.) My dad (from the "Silent Generation") and I have discussed the failures of the boomers many times.

We have heard much of the greatest generation in recent years. By and large, this is a fair appraisal I think. That generation suffered through the Great Depression. (Caused by a Republican, prolonged by a Democrat; using exactly the same set of ideas.) After that, they shook the dust off and traveled all over the world to open a stupendous can of whoop ass on Japanese militarism and European fascism. After that, they came home and set about building our country into the most prosperous nation the world has ever known.

However, they fucked up in one crucial regard. They gave birth to the most self-absorbed, self righteous and deluded generation in our history. The progress of the boomers through recent history is a long tragedy. The unrest of the sixties, the indolence of the me generation, the abandonment of all their "ideals" in the eighties; and now as they approach retirement, they are proposing to screw every following generation to finance a comfortable and medically well supported retirement.

The boomers are by and large even wealthier as they approach retirement than their parents were. The average 50 year old boomer owns his home, has investments and a comfortable salary. Despite this, they want the government to provide health care, prescription drugs and social security benefits. How will these benefits be paid for? From taxes on the wages of the younger generations, or deficit spending on a scale that we have never seen in this country.

The only solution is means testing, and some sort of realistic benefit plan that takes into account the amount of money they paid in. And for the rest of us, something like the government workers' pension plan (they are exempt from social security taxes) for the rest of us so that this situation doesn't happen again.

Mike and I may differ on what services should be provided to the poor, but I think he'll agree that we should not be giving handouts to people who own their homes, have investment portfolios, and a pension. That really is theft. Social Security is a giant Ponzi scheme, and our generation is on the bottom of the pyramid.