http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/...-boomers-american-economy-20151107-story.html
great article running down all the issues with the boomer generation. Some snippets:
Boomers soaked up a lot of economic opportunity without bothering to preserve much for the generations to come. They burned a lot of cheap fossil fuels, filled the atmosphere with heat-trapping gases and will probably never pay the costs of averting catastrophic climate change or helping their grandchildren adapt to a warmer world. They took control of Washington at the turn of the millennium, and they used it to rack up a lot of federal debt, even before the Great Recession hit.
If anyone deserves to pay more to shore up the federal safety net, either through higher taxes or lower benefits, it's boomers - the generation that was born into some of the strongest job growth in the history of America, gobbled up the best parts, and left its children and grandchildren with some bones to pick through and a big bill to pay.
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Meanwhile, future generations will have to pay the costs of weaning the world from fossil fuels and/or adapting to warmer temperatures, rising seas and more extreme weather. (Estimates vary, but some projections suggest that could total trillions of dollars for the United States alone.) They will also have to shoulder the burden of keeping America's retirement promises to the boomers. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the rising costs of Social Security and government health care that will stem from an aging population will consume two more percentage pointsof America's economic output by 2040. If policymakers don't find the revenue to pay for it all, the CBO projects that the national debt will climb past 100 percent of annual gross domestic product - quadruple its post-World War II low.
And yet almost no one suggests that boomers should share the pain of shoring up those programs. Folks my father's age like to say they've paid for those benefits, so they should get them in full. But they haven't. The Urban Institute has estimated that a typical couple retiring in 2011, at the leading edge of the boomer wave, will end up drawing about $200,000 more from Medicare and Social Security than they paid in taxes to support those programs. Because Social Security benefits increase faster than inflation, boomers will enjoy bigger checks from the program, in real terms, than their parents did.
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me talking now
Boomers should take a small hit on their ss. If they were serious about not having other generations pay for their ss they should of done things while they had power to stop it from happening.
assholes.
great article running down all the issues with the boomer generation. Some snippets:
Boomers soaked up a lot of economic opportunity without bothering to preserve much for the generations to come. They burned a lot of cheap fossil fuels, filled the atmosphere with heat-trapping gases and will probably never pay the costs of averting catastrophic climate change or helping their grandchildren adapt to a warmer world. They took control of Washington at the turn of the millennium, and they used it to rack up a lot of federal debt, even before the Great Recession hit.
If anyone deserves to pay more to shore up the federal safety net, either through higher taxes or lower benefits, it's boomers - the generation that was born into some of the strongest job growth in the history of America, gobbled up the best parts, and left its children and grandchildren with some bones to pick through and a big bill to pay.
-----------------
Meanwhile, future generations will have to pay the costs of weaning the world from fossil fuels and/or adapting to warmer temperatures, rising seas and more extreme weather. (Estimates vary, but some projections suggest that could total trillions of dollars for the United States alone.) They will also have to shoulder the burden of keeping America's retirement promises to the boomers. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the rising costs of Social Security and government health care that will stem from an aging population will consume two more percentage pointsof America's economic output by 2040. If policymakers don't find the revenue to pay for it all, the CBO projects that the national debt will climb past 100 percent of annual gross domestic product - quadruple its post-World War II low.
And yet almost no one suggests that boomers should share the pain of shoring up those programs. Folks my father's age like to say they've paid for those benefits, so they should get them in full. But they haven't. The Urban Institute has estimated that a typical couple retiring in 2011, at the leading edge of the boomer wave, will end up drawing about $200,000 more from Medicare and Social Security than they paid in taxes to support those programs. Because Social Security benefits increase faster than inflation, boomers will enjoy bigger checks from the program, in real terms, than their parents did.
============
me talking now
Boomers should take a small hit on their ss. If they were serious about not having other generations pay for their ss they should of done things while they had power to stop it from happening.
assholes.