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An Appeal to Older People From a Millennial
I recently had a discussion with an older cousin of mine in his 50s. He was telling me he would like to see the welfare state gone, deregulation, smaller government, and all the other standard stuff Conservatives want for the future. Then he was telling me how my generation is footing the bill and tough luck for you guys. Live with it while I benefit because you guys didn’t vote the other way in very large numbers. I have heard this same line of argument or reasoning multiple times before. And I explained to him that this position towards millennials as on the hook for paying for the Boomers’ and Gen-Xers’ tab is immoral.
First off, Social Security and Medicare are the biggest welfare programs in the country. People get mad when I say it, but it is true. It was sold to the country as a government-run savings account, but that isn’t the case. People generally take out more than they put in and these programs are bankrupting the nation. Medicare alone will rise from about $615 billion at present, to a little over $1 trillion in just the next seven years. The rise in costs is far beyond anything that was put into it. This is welfare, pure and simple. It is robbing the young and their future to pay for the old. It is robbing the future of this country. That is what is happening. To complain about Uncle Sam stealing or taxing all the time while cashing these checks and enjoying medicare is hypocrisy to the 10th power.
Yes, you got fleeced. The government forcibly took money out of your paychecks for decades to fund unsustainable programs that are robbing the future of this country you hold dear, and the futures of your kids and grandkids, whom I also hope you hold just as dear. You lost that money and what was done to you is unjust. But to then turn around and fleece your progeny because you got robbed does not make it right. It makes things even more unjust and puts in jeopardy the economic well being of your progeny and this nation. I am 26 years old. These programs will not exist at all when I am old enough to be done working or can work no longer. But if I had the choice right now or in the foreseeable future, I would tell the government to keep the money they robbed from me, as I will not jeopardize or steal my descendants’ future. Many conservatives have bought into the idea that we should just accept the New Deal and Great Society as already here. I reject that, totally. The New Deal and Great Society have given us decades of nothing but highway robbery and phony promises. As I reminded my cousin, Millennials didn’t invent Social Security or Medicare, and we have nothing to do with — or to gain from — these programs that will soon break our country.
This is the evil of statism. This is the evil of collectivism. The statists create conflict and animosity between poor and rich, male and female, black and white, young and old, etc., etc. This is what happens when self-reliance is done away with and you force one generation to sacrifice their well being for that of another. To say — as my cousin essentially did — “Enjoy your future, Millennials!” is nihilistic and destructive. It isn’t Conservative. Fighting for the next tax break or reduction in corporate taxes, deregulation, or any other financial matter is a pittance compared to what ending these programs means.
So please, do everything to end your dependence on these programs. Do everything you can to shut the door on them permanently, even if it means you lose money. The future of this nation and your descendants will greatly benefit from it. It means you didn’t force your grandchildren and great-grandchildren to sacrifice their well-being long after you’re in the ground. If conservatives really stand for self-reliance and individualism, they need to stand against intergenerational redistribution and collectivism.
I have heard too many conservatives argue along the same nonsensical and nihilistic lines as my cousin did in defending these programs. That is unworthy of anyone who claims to hold the values of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
Published in Domestic Policy, Politics
So …. The Treasuries held by PIMCO and Calpers and my 401k must be fraudulent too. Its the same process.
Like I said. I think you are in tin foil hat land on this point. worry all you want about fraudulent Treasuries. I won’t. Lots of genuine problems out there competing for my attention.
If you are really convinced you are right…make a citizen’s arrest of Jack Lew.
Have a good one Guru.
I turn 76 in a month and live a fine style, thanks partly to SS and Medicare. But hey, don’t think I don’t appreciate what you young folks are doing for me and the enchanting Mrs. L. Hope there’s something left for you in 20-30 years.
BTW, one point that I rarely see in SS discussions is how racially unfair it is. Only a few years ago the black male life expectancy was about 65. Get your first check, then check out.
I’m enjoying watching the merry-go-round with Guru and Ekosj both appearing on every turn. I’m agreeing mostly with Guru, but am enjoying Ekosj’s bulldog-like tenacity. It’s been forty years since I took an econ class, but maybe I can illustrate my concerns a little more simply.
The missing part of Ekosj’s argument is that Treasury notes are only actually assets because they have the heretofore-solid full faith and credit of the US behind them. Absent the government’s ability to expand the money supply as a means to cover expanding debts and a means to reduce interest rates, groups like S & P or Morningstar would rate treasury notes as junk bonds.
My buying $10K worth of bonds may be a prudent personal investment now because, in the short run, I know that officials in Washington will do everything possible to avoid default. I also know that the long run will see a default or Argentina-level hyperinflation as demographics have their cruel way.
That dynamic doesn’t make the treasury certificates held by the SS trust fund tangible assets, it makes them phantom assets that we’ve agreed to recognize as a means to keep the our economy alive.
Again, I’m trying to contrast the value of treasury notes from the perspective of an individual investor vis a vis the perspective of an entire society. It’s one thing for an individual or company to invest part of his or its savings in treasury notes: there are alternative means of survival if they default. It’s quite another thing for an entire society to put its entire future in a set of assets that are nothing more, really, than a political construct, the survival of which is wholly dependent on the self-discipline of elected politicians in an increasingly-perilous economic environment.
That’s why I’m troubled by Ekosj’s notion that we’ve legitimately”invested” our SS trust fund. I think, rather, that we’ve spent it for that which we were not willing or able to pay for with federal income tax revenue. Once those assets have been used to pay for whatever we spent those bond-sale revenues on, it’s delusional (sorry for the harsh term, Ekosj) to think that those assets somehow magically retain their value.
Does any of this make any sense to you, Ekosj?
1) I am a working tax-payer as well. My husband and I brought home $48K with five jobs between us. And we owe almost a thousand bucks, including the Obamacare penalty, because we didn’t apply for subsidies.
2) If you’re funding my loans, why is the balance going up every month?
Seriously, if you’re trying to hurt my feelings, bear in mind that I’ve been suicidally depressed most of my life, been fired, had a car repossessed (and then scrounged up the money to redeem it), lost my house in foreclosure, and had (and paid off) credit card debt that was half of our yearly salary at one point, and am currently a quarter million dollars in debt. There is no variation of “lazy worthless whiner” you can call me that I have not called myself.
But I have yet to hear a really good reason why I have to be robbed to pay for your old age, because “I was robbed to pay for my parents too” doesn’t cut it. I’ll grudgingly accept “I have to be robbed to pay for my parents as a grand bargain to phase out the system so my children won’t be,” but don’t expect me to like it. I’m not exactly the “lie back and think of England” type.
I’m not in the business of hurting feelings- that’s your choice to feel insulted.
Don’t argue that you’ve been robbed because based upon your declared income, you’re not paying any fed taxes at all. You’re ponying up for the payroll taxes I do for both my family and my employees.
And don’t ever misquote me again.
So, would now be a good time for myself and the other Gen-Xers on Ricochet to jump in and start trolling everyone on this thread?
Too soon?
Social Security and Medicare (entitlements for the over-65 crowd) are a great big sh!t sandwich, and we’re all going to have to take a bite.
I strongly suspect we’re all going to be force-fed our shares of the sandwich in the form of the Federal government monetizing the obligation (i.e. “printing” money to pay off the benefits). Oldsters will get their $1200/month (or whatever), but a quart of milk will cost $20.
Want to fix it, quit voting for Social Justice Warriors like Obama, Clinton, Warren, et. al. If Same Sex Marriage, free birth control, abortion at any time for any reason or whatever is more important to you than fiscal sanity*, it’s your choice but turn in your kvetching license.
I’ve been trying, since 1980, to explain to people what a scam Social Security is. It is almost impossible to get the point across. Including to Millennials.
*Fiscal sanity, at its core, is a core component of National Security, the sine qua non of issues. If we don’t get National Security right, none of the other issues are going to matter.
As per IRS 1040 Tax Tables, a family filing jointly with an income of $48,000 is responsible for ~$6,300 of federal income tax. Not payroll tax, income tax. I’ll refrain from misquoting you if you don’t lie about me.
Strictly speaking, I haven’t really been robbed yet. But I’m looking at the robber with his knife at my throat and I don’t really feel like handing over my wallet. Especially when his only excuse is that someone else robbed him.
I think what Eksoj is missing is that the SSTF and the Treasury are wearing the same pair of pants.
No the SSTF is not fraudulent in the technical sense, as the SSTF represents an obligation of the Federal government. However, that doesn’t mean that the Treasury has unlimited ability to pay back the SSTF. The fraud happens when the SSTF bought Treasuries, not when they are paid back.
The SSTF is like borrowing from your piggybank to buy that candy bar you wanted. You can write an IOU and put it in your piggybank, but I doubt that the next time you want a candy bar the store will accept the IOU you wrote to yourself as payment.
I agree with nick, all in all we’re all going to be screwed in the end with these programs. But Statist types are always looking at new sources of revenue and they see a big pot of untaxable money in the those retirement accounts. 401ks, IRA’s, etc…. I remember mark levin interviewing some leftist professor who proposed a plan to take money from the private retirement accounts in exchange for government bonds (cause the government is a GREAT investment) . We always need to be wary because everybody knows SS/ Medicare is unsustainable, but also politically unpopular to do anything about. They are going to try to get the money from somewhere……
I agree with most here that attacking the Baby Boomers as a whole is non-productive.
Who we really should be blaming are the liberals, progressives, and Democrats.
If you talk to people who study the issue closely, SS is relatively easy fix. It is Medicare that is going to bankrupt us.
Either medical costs will have to come way down (no more $240k average salaries for internists, $100k average salaries for Nurse Practitioners, and a whole lot fewer health administrators), or medical expenditures will have to be drastically cut. I doubt the third option of dramatically higher Medicare taxes will fly with the tax paying public.
What most people don’t realize is that wages in the health care sector in the US are way higher than those in Europe.
Yup. This is completely true. SS will look like a drop in the bucket compared to Medicare.
That said, I predict a lot of people will opt out of care, and consequently this Medicare explosion may not materialize.
A lot of people who are entitled to benefits of all kinds never take advantage of them. That’s true for all tax-funded programs. Some public parks are never used. And some poor people never get into Section 8 housing. Kids drop out of high school at 16.
The same will be true of the Medicare budget. Many more people will reject medical care than they are predicting right now.
MarciN: Wasn’t that true with health insurance in those heady, pre-Obamacare days? I read somewhere that a good number of “uninsured” were actually people who eligible for different programs but never signed up.
Yes. All true.
Social Security can buy me out anytime they like. I’ve paid into the system since I was 16 years old. I’ll take a lump sum payment of what I paid in during those years.
Whoo-hoo! X-er pride! High five!
(born in 1974)
This keeps Mr. Charlotte and me up at night. Someday they will get their hands on it. Should we be burying gold bars in the back yard?
Liz, I might need your contact to set up those accounts in the Bahamas…
Being on my lunch break, I don’t have time to read all 6 pages of comments, so pardon me if I address that has already been mentioned.
I was born 4/56, so am looking at retirement down the road. I’ll work as long as I’m physically able, but at some point, I’ll be hanging it up. I have a 401k, as does my husband, and we own some land. Our house is paid for, we do have a home improvement loan that is paid ahead at least a year, because I always pay more than the required amount. We have one car loan, to be paid in 3 years.
I hope to be in decent shape when retirement hits (my husband is only 4 months older than me). However, the recent news that illegal immigrants will be able to draw SS payments, even if they didn’t pay in, has me steamed. They will also get Earned Income Credit refunds without contributing. (If I have this wrong, please correct me!)
We need to stop paying out money to those who don’t deserve it, never did anything to earn it, and don’t want to contribute to society. You all remember the beach bum in California who was PROUD of how he gamed the system to get money for food, etc. Why in h-e-double toothpicks wasn’t he arrested and thrown in jail? Better yet, chain him to a cannonball and make him pick up trash, clean graffiti off walls, and any other demeaning task that needs done. Cruel & unusual punishment, you say? I say, cruel & unusual crimes against the citizens of this country! If there was more shaming done, there might be a little less free-loading.
Illegals aliens do NOT have a right to work in this country; they’re here illegally, so I feel they have no rights, period. Why didn’t we do what was done in the 50s when illegal aliens were flooding the border states? Why does Mexico defend its border more fiercely than the U.S.? Why should the states bear the burden of food, housing, education, health care, etc. for those crossing against the law? Why should illegals benefit from the fruits of OUR labor?
I probably crossed many lines of CoC conduct, so I’ll wait for my beat-down. It just infuriates me how ‘conservatives’ so meekly stand by and take whatever the left wants to dish out. When are we going to do some ‘dishing’ of our own?
Also, just rcvd la douleureuse from my acct of 20 years and he was astonished at – and I quote him- the illegality of the changes in the IRS rules. Makes me want to buy a very big mattress …
Hey, I haven’t been reprimanded, so my comments are ‘spirited’, I guess, and not that offensive? Anyway, Chucksteak, my memory may be faulty, but SS was started as a means to provide a cushion for people in their ‘twilight’ years. Eighty years ago, as noted elsewhere here, the country was very different. It was more rural, you could find 2 or more generations living in the same house, which meant elders were cared for and also could help with children. Frugality was not a dirty word—‘use it up, wear it out, make it do” was the operating system for many people.
SS helped those who may not have had the preceding to fall back on—that, combined with personal savings, could make people comfortable. Today, we have so much ‘stuff’ to spend money on—some wisely, more often foolishly. Health care is much more expensive, travel is more costly, food costs more, and people don’t have the close family ties and communities to provide support as before. (The ACA is NOT healthcare; it’s supposed to be healthcare insurance.)
Now, we have politicians robbing SS to pay for other entitlements, crooks getting rich defrauding it, and people who never paid into it getting benefits (don’t include the widow who stayed home and raised the kids while her husband got a paycheck and paid into it—she IS entitled.)
Don’t let the experience with your cousin color your attitude toward the rest of us 55-65 year olds. You’ve paid in for ten years, and you’re tired? Grow up, darn it—I’ve paid in since I was 16—that’s 42 YEARS. I fear you’re all sizzle, but no steak.
You are awesome! There is no need for you alone to make a sacrifice like that. I am just positing that at least Conservatives could and should band together as much as possible and make something happen for their kid’s sakes. But I admire your principled living to a degree I can not express. If every Conservative did what you did a real difference could be made. If I were your age I would be attempting the same thing. If Social Security is still running when I retire I still don’t want any part of it even if it becomes solvent again. It is a statist and anti-freedom program.
My mother in law puts her social security check into an account for her grandchildren, she never touches the money.
Millenials will get what they get because they vote how they vote.
Don’t blame me, I’ve been arguing Social Security& Medicare are Ponzi schemes since 1975.