Are Young People in Their 20's Too Stupid to Realize They're Being Ripped Off?
Why aren't young people in their 20's and early 30's more furious? Why aren't they marching in the streets for Paul Ryan's budget?
They're nothing less than victims of a vast, Madoff-like Ponzi scheme. From John Goodman's Health Policy blog (with a major hat tip to James Pethokoukis, who for my money is the best financial reporter in America):
Think about everything you will pay to support Medicare: the payroll taxes while you are working, the premiums during retirement, and your share of the income taxes that subsidize the system. Then compare that to the benefits of Medicare insurance, say, from age 65 until the day you die.
Are you likely to come out ahead? That depends in part on how old you are. If you are a typical 85-year-old, for example, you can expect about $55,000 of insurance benefits over and above everything you have been paying into the system. If you’re a typical 25-year-old, however, you will pay an extra $111,000 into the system, over and above any benefits you can expect to receive.
If you're young, you're being ripped off:
Why does Medicare favor the old and discriminate against the young? Because like Social Security, Medicare finances work like a chain letter. Although workers have been repeatedly told that their payroll taxes are being securely held in trust funds, they are actually being spent—the very minute, the very hour, the very day they arrive in the Treasury’s bank account.
No money has been saved. No investments have been made. No cash has been stashed away in bank vaults. Today’s payroll tax payments are being spent to pay medical bills for today’s retirees. And if any surplus materializes, it’s spent on other government programs. As a result, when today’s workers reach the eligibility age of 65, they will be able to get benefits only if future taxpayers pay (higher) taxes to support them.
Just as Bernie Madoff was able to offer early investors above-market returns, early retirees got a bonanza from Social Security and Medicare. That’s the way chain-letter finance works. But in the long run, there’s no free lunch. That’s why things look so dismal for young people entering the labor market today.
And yet: no protests in the streets. No marches. No student sit-ins. No youth agitation at all, really, except for a couple of College Republicans in blue blazers. What? Are they stupid? After all of that college tuition? Are young people in their 20's just dumb?
At a certain point, as the Bernie Madoff saga unfolded, a lot of us wondered if there wasn't some blame to be shared with the folks who believed his nonsense, who credulously cashed the checks in good years and bad, who never asked how he managed such stellar and consistent returns.
As a man in his 40's who is currently participating in the great swindle, I've got to say to the kids in their 20's: thanks for making it so easy.
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Oct '10
Re: Are Young People in Their 20's Too Stupid to Realize They're Being Ripped Off?
Rob-I offer my modest solution to this problem on the member feed:
http://ricochet.com/member-feed/Save-the-Nation-Install-Maximum-Voter-Age
Oct '10
Re: Are Young People in Their 20's Too Stupid to Realize They're Being Ripped Off?
Tax theYoung !!! Nuff said...
Jun '10
Re: Are Young People in Their 20's Too Stupid to Realize They're Being Ripped Off?
College students are too busy living for today to worry about tomorrow. They are of a generation used to getting ripped off by their government. If they even consider the problem they don't believe they can do anything constructive about it. They've got good reason to be pessimistic. If we, their elders, can't get a grip the issues of the day, what can they do?
Jun '10
Re: Are Young People in Their 20's Too Stupid to Realize They're Being Ripped Off?
Oh dear. I hardly know where to start. We're talking about the silver spoon generation, right? They graduate high school and move on to a job serving coffee at the local Starbucks. They live at home and spend their money on luxuries: a new car, electronics, and facial jewelry. They live in the moment. The future means this weekend's party. Economics is the practice of putting the cost of a tattoo on your first credit card.
Oct '10
Re: Are Young People in Their 20's Too Stupid to Realize They're Being Ripped Off?
It's not that bad. It's like Robert says, we've grown up used to government confiscation and insane public policy. It won't change without a crisis, anyway. Mercifully we finally seem to be close to one, so perhaps something will change.
May '11
Re: Are Young People in Their 20's Too Stupid to Realize They're Being Ripped Off?
And this, in a nutshell, is why I am chronically depressed. The oldsters will never vote to give up their entitlements, or even reduce them. The left knows this and that will be the only theme blasted across the airwaves until the next election. I was in Charlotte last week on business and there was already a rather nasty TV commercial about how those awful republicans are going to be stealing everything that granny worked for and she wouldn't stand for it.
My own kids are of the age you cite and they haven't the foggiest clue as to what's going on, even with me trying to explain it over the last several years.
Everything other than the pending economic disaster is a mere triviality. I can only worry about winning the culture war when I'm not required by poverty to forage for scraps.
Apr '11
Re: Are Young People in Their 20's Too Stupid to Realize They're Being Ripped Off?
The Marquis de Condorcet once said, "[The Assembly] wants to insure that in the future all citizens can be self-sufficient in all calculations related to their interests; without which they can be neither really equal in rights. . .nor really free." Our citizens are not, in general, self-sufficient in calculations related to their interests, because even as the demand for math teachers has grown, the supply of math teachers has shrunk. We are now at the point where there aren't sufficient people left who know enough such mathematics to train the next generation at the level required. Even now, something on the order of half of high school math classes are being taught by teachers who have neither a major, minor, or endorsement in mathematics, meaning their last math class was probably their high school math class, or possibly one after that as a general ed requirement in college. The curricula have been dumbed down substantially, to the point where even as more students take classes called called "trigonometry" and "calculus," the actual math content of the class is greatly diminished and many of these "advanced" students cannot solve linear equations from start to finish without guidance.
Sep '10
Re: Are Young People in Their 20's Too Stupid to Realize They're Being Ripped Off?
That would be me you're talking about, dude.
May '10
Re: Are Young People in Their 20's Too Stupid to Realize They're Being Ripped Off?
Rob, the most important political issue for people my age is gay marriage. By a long shot.
Mar '11
Re: Are Young People in Their 20's Too Stupid to Realize They're Being Ripped Off?
It seems that way too many 20 somethings just plain lack common sense. I think this comes from too much coddling at home and school which leaves them with the feeling that everything will "always" work out. It is going to take a pretty big jolt to the system to get some of these people to wake up.
Almost as troubling to me is how easily we let the older generation off on this issue. Almost everyone who forwards a "solution" to the entitlement problem refuses to ask anyone over 55 to make any sacrifices. It seems to me that this is the same group that created the ponzi scheme in the first place and should have seen that it was unsustainable in the long run.
May '10
Re: Are Young People in Their 20's Too Stupid to Realize They're Being Ripped Off?
thayes:
Almost as troubling to me is how easily we let the older generation off on this issue. Almost everyone who forwards a "solution" to the entitlement problem refuses to ask anyone over 55 to make any sacrifices. It seems to me that this is the same group that created the ponzi scheme in the first place and should have seen that it was unsustainable in the long run.
Could anyone object if benefits were cut back to just what they paid in? It seems like opposing that would make them look selfish.
Nov '10
Re: Are Young People in Their 20's Too Stupid to Realize They're Being Ripped Off?
Yes. And if I said this before, here it is again: Pop culture often provides a way of expressing otherwise inchoate cultural anxieties. You may have wondered why there are so many contemporary films about vampires –cold, cynical, predatory, elitist—and zombies –feeding off the living long after they themselves have died. No surprise that the governing class resembles the former, and the hordes of entitlement beneficiaries the latter. In those stories there are only three alternatives: be their prey, fight them, or become them. Issues –like the looming debt apocalypse– that for political reasons some would render unspeakable, may still find a way into our stories, or our nightmares. Call it the return of the (politically) repressed.
Oct '10
Re: Are Young People in Their 20's Too Stupid to Realize They're Being Ripped Off?
I think it's pretty straightforward. Young people do not want to vote for politicians who they think are going to push for policies such as federal gay marriage bans, mass deportation of illegal immigrants, etc.
The fact that they are otherwise getting completely ripped just goes to show how important these issues are to younger people.
Edited on June 27, 2011 at 10:37pmNov '10
Re: Are Young People in Their 20's Too Stupid to Realize They're Being Ripped Off?
I guess I just don't see all the gloom and doom. It's true that active involvement in the regular economy is way down for many 20-somethings, OTOH, the off-the-books economy seems to be thriving, and many seem quite happy to work when they want and take off when they want. Of course it means lower material expectations - but really, who in their right mind aspires to a McMansion and a couple of of Prius's paid for by a lifetime of drudgery at BigIndustry Inc.? It's like society is self-correcting by forcing many of its best and brightest into becoming practical libertarians.
BTW Rob - expect no mercy from them when you hit 65....
Nov '10
Re: Are Young People in Their 20's Too Stupid to Realize They're Being Ripped Off?
Mark Wilson
thayes:
Almost as troubling to me is how easily we let the older generation off on this issue. Almost everyone who forwards a "solution" to the entitlement problem refuses to ask anyone over 55 to make any sacrifices. It seems to me that this is the same group that created the ponzi scheme in the first place and should have seen that it was unsustainable in the long run.
Could anyone object if benefits were cut back to just what they paid in? It seems like opposing that would make them look selfish. · Jun 27 at 12:48pm
I wouldn't object (I'm 60).
Dec '10
Re: Are Young People in Their 20's Too Stupid to Realize They're Being Ripped Off?
Rob Long: Why aren't young people in their 20's and early 30's more furious? Why aren't they marching in the streets for Paul Ryan's budget?
Are they stupid? After all of that college tuition? Are young people in their 20's just dumb? ·
We are not genuinely stupid, to over-generalize. We are a generation who possess rhetorical skills and the basic raw materials of intelligence. We have simply never been trained in critical thought. We have never been asked a question that couldn't be answered through multiple choice, or subjective personal reflection upon a subject.
My generation thinks that man's ability to create painless solutions is both genuine and endless. Thank you mothers & fathers for childhoods devoid of discomfort, and politicians who propagate this myth. Having rejected options A, B, and C they are simply waiting for an acceptable alternative to be dreamed up by a technocrat at some point in the future.
Edited on June 27, 2011 at 10:53pmAug '10
Re: Are Young People in Their 20's Too Stupid to Realize They're Being Ripped Off?
What I'd say is that folks my age (20s) aren't dumb, exactly, but inexperienced.
For example, by temperament I'm fairly frugal, but through sheer inexperience I've sometimes wasted what I consider to be embarrassingly large amounts of money in retrospect (not that a person of less frugal temperament would be so embarrassed). Fortunately, I learn my lesson pretty quickly -- but there are always new lessons to learn, aren't there?
Feb '11
Re: Are Young People in Their 20's Too Stupid to Realize They're Being Ripped Off?
Midget Faded Rattlesnake
What I'd say is that folks my age (20s) aren't dumb, exactly, but inexperienced.
For example, by temperament I'm fairly frugal, but through sheer inexperience I've sometimes wasted what I consider to be embarrassingly large amounts of money in retrospect (not that a person of less frugal temperament would be so embarrassed). Fortunately, I learn my lesson pretty quickly -- but there are always new lessons to learn, aren't there? · Jun 27 at 2:17pm
Sorry, Midget Faded Rattlesnake. I was in my 20s once. I haven't done enough drugs since then to have forgotten completely. The answer to Mr. Long's question is: Yes.
Dec '10
Re: Are Young People in Their 20's Too Stupid to Realize They're Being Ripped Off?
Midget Faded Rattlesnake
What I'd say is that folks my age (20s) aren't dumb, exactly, but inexperienced.
.... Fortunately, I learn my lesson pretty quickly -- but there are always new lessons to learn, aren't there? · Jun 27 at 2:17pm
Midge, well said. I'm in there with ya (20's). Your experience sounds awfully similar to my own, and I agree with your conclusion. I think a line can be drawn between ignorance and idiocy with most of us standing on the former.
I think admitting to that ignorance is the first step on the road to wisdom.......and conservatism.
Edited on June 28, 2011 at 12:35amMay '11
Re: Are Young People in Their 20's Too Stupid to Realize They're Being Ripped Off?
Beasley
Rob Long: Why aren't young people in their 20's and early 30's more furious? Why aren't they marching in the streets for Paul Ryan's budget?
Are they stupid? After all of that college tuition? Are young people in their 20's just dumb? ·
We are not genuinely stupid, to over-generalize. We are a generation who possess rhetorical skills and the basic raw materials of intelligence. We have simply never been trained in critical thought. We have never been asked a question that couldn't be answered through multiple choice, or subjective personal reflection upon a subject.
My generation thinks that man's ability to create painless solutions is both genuine and endless. Thank you mothers & fathers for childhoods devoid of discomfort, and politicians who propagate this myth. Having rejected options A, B, and C they are simply waiting for an acceptable alternative to be dreamed up by a technocrat at some point in the future. · Jun 27 at 1:52pm
Edited on Jun 27 at 01:53 pm
I would also add overprotected and overstructured. It seems that all kids activities are monitored by adults.