The Shallowest Generation

The Baby Boom Generation will never be mistaken for the Greatest Generation that survived the Great Depression and defeated evil in a World War that killed 72 million people. I hate to tell you Boomers, but putting a yellow ribbon on the back of your $50,000 SUV is not sacrifice.

Our claim to fame is living way beyond our means for the last three decades, to the point where we have virtually bankrupted our capitalist system. Baby Boomers have been occupying the White House for the last sixteen years. The majority of Congress is Baby Boomers. The CEOs and top executives of Wall Street firms are Baby Boomers. The media is dominated by Baby Boom executives and on-air stars. We have no one to blame but ourselves for the current predicament. Blaming Franklin Roosevelt or Lyndon Johnson for our dire situation is a cop out. Baby Boomers had the time, power, and ability to change our course. We have chosen to leave the heavy lifting to future generations in order to live the good life today.

Of course, not all Baby Boomers are shallow, greedy, and corrupt. Mostly Boomers with power and wealth fall into this category. There were 76 million Baby Boomers born between 1946 and 1963. They now make up 28% of the U.S. population. Their impact on America is undeniable. The defining events of their generation have been the Kennedy assassination, Vietnam, Kent State, Woodstock, the 1^st man on the moon, and now the collapse of our Ponzi scheme financial system. They rebelled against their parents, protested the Vietnam War, and settled down in 2,300 square foot cookie cutter McMansions with perfectly manicured lawns, in mall infested suburbia. They have raised overscheduled spoiled children, moved up the corporate ladder by pushing paper rather than making things, lived above their means in order to keep up with their neighbors, bought whatever they wanted using debt, and never worried about the future. Over optimism, unrealistic assumptions, selfishness and conspicuous consumption have been their defining characteristics.

click to enlarge images

Boomers are currently in their prime earning and spending years. A Baby Boomer turns 50 years old every 7 seconds. The older Boomers had a fantastic run from 1989 through 2004. Median net worth for those between the ages of 55 and 59 rose 97% over 15 years to $249,700 in 2004. Median income rose 52%. The younger generation between the ages of 35 and 39 saw their median net worth fall 28% to $48,940. Their median income dropped 10% over the same 15 year period. It is clear that all Baby Boomers are not created equal. Based on calculations made by the Federal Reserve, at least 50% of Boomers will not have a happy retirement. The bottom 30% will reach the age of 65 with net worth of less than $100,000. They will try to subsist in poverty, dependent upon social security and part time Wal-Mart jobs until they die penniless. The top 30% will retire to lives of luxury and leisure. The middle 40% will muddle through with social security payments the only thing keeping them from an old age in poverty.

We have become a have and have not society. Our economy favors education, entrepreneurship, and creativity. Those benefitting from a good education will make dramatically more money than the uneducated laborers. The top 20% of households make 12.5 times the lowest 20% of households. This ratio was 7 to 1 in 1982. The top 1% of households make 20% of all the income in the U.S., the highest rate since 1928. Does this statistic portend a decade long depression? The difference between now and 1928 is the huge household debt burden of Americans. This usage of debt by the poor has masked the gap between haves and have nots for the last 20 years.

As I drive to work every day in my fully paid for 2002 CRV with 110,000 miles, I have plenty of time to observe my surroundings. Sitting in traffic on the Schuylkill Expressway, I have noticed that the number of luxury Mercedes, BMW, Cadillac and Lexus vehicles seems out of proportion to the number of wealthy people in the Philadelphia population.

When I see an older gentleman, wearing a suit, driving one of these automobiles, I assume that he is a wealthy executive who has put in his time and rewarded himself with a luxury vehicle. But, most of these vehicles are being driven by Joe the Plumber types. As I take a shortcut through some of the more depressed areas of West Philadelphia, I see people talking on their Apple (AAPL) iPhones, Direct TV satellite dishes attached to dilapidated row homes, and Cadillac Escalades & Mercedes parked on the mean streets. This is not exactly the world that Henry Fonda’s character, Tom Joad, described in The Grapes of Wrath:

I'll be all around in the dark - I'll be everywhere. Wherever you can look - wherever there's a fight, so hungry people can eat, I'll be there. Wherever there's a cop beatin' up a guy, I'll be there. I'll be in the way guys yell when they're mad. I'll be in the way kids laugh when they're hungry and they know supper's ready, and when the people are eatin' the stuff they raise and livin' in the houses they build - I'll be there, too.

When I see “poor” people appearing to live a more luxurious life than myself, I don’t feel jealous. The thought that goes through my head is: Which banks or finance companies were foolish enough to loan these people the money to live this lifestyle? These foolish financial institutions will never get their loans repaid. What does bother me is that the Bush-Paulson-Pelosi Bailout of Stupid Banks will use my taxes to buy these bad loans from the foolish banks.

So, who is the fool in this scenario? The “poor” person got to drive a Cadillac Escalade for a period of time, the foolish banks got bailed out, the bank CEOs took home $30 million, and I lived within my means and footed the bill for the reckless actions of others. It appears that the fools are the Americans who lived their lives according to the rules. The anger is building. I don’t think the politicians running this country realize what true anger looks like. They are used to Americans being herded along like passive sheep.

I’ve heard many Republican ideologues blame the current crisis on the people who took the subprime loans for home purchases. I’ve also heard many Democratic ideologues blame the crisis on the regulators. The ideologues are wrong, as usual. If a poor person has no home, no vehicle, and no prospects; then a bank tells them that they can buy a $300,000 home, drive a $55,000 Mercedes SUV, and live like people on TV; why wouldn’t they say yes? What is their downside? If you have nothing and “The Man” offers you the American Dream, you’d actually be foolish to say no. Now that they have lost the home in foreclosure and the repo man has taken the Mercedes, they are exactly where they were a few years ago with no home, no vehicle and no prospects.

The regulators were certainly asleep at the wheel. They did not enforce existing rules, foolishly waived leverage rules for the biggest investment banks, and believed that the banks would regulate themselves. They were wrong, but they never made a single loan. The commercial banks, investment banks, auto finance companies, and credit card companies made the ridiculous loans to people who could never pay them back in the search for short term profits. Greedy Wall Street executives created an artificial market for the loans in order to generate billions in fees so they could enrich themselves through stock options and obscene bonuses. They spent their false riches on $2 million NYC penthouses, $100,000 Porsche 911s, and $5 million beachfront estates in the Hamptons. Based on the estimated $2 trillion of losses that our banks have generated, the CEOs certainly deserved annual pay 500 times as high as the average worker. There is no way an “average” worker could possibly be talented enough to lose $2 trillion. You would need to be truly extraordinary to lose that much.

CEOs’ average pay, production workers’ average pay, the S&P 500 Index, corporate profits, and the Federal minimum wage, 1990-2005 (adjusted for inflation):

Source: Executive Excess 2006, 13^th annual CEO Compensation Survey

The brutal necessary lesson that should have been learned is that if you loan money to people who can’t pay you back, your bank will go bankrupt. The “poor” people who made a bad decision in buying homes and cars they couldn’t afford have lost those homes and cars. The banks made a bad business decision in making those loans. The taxpayer was not involved in these business transactions. This is where Hank Paulson, Ben Bernanke and George Bush, formerly free market capitalists, decided to commit our grandchildren’s money to bailing out the horribly run financial institutions.

Our government has chosen to allow these banks off the hook for their bad business decisions at the expense of taxpayers. Rewarding bad decisions and bad behavior will lead to more bad decisions and more bad behavior. The government has made a dreadful decision that will haunt our country for generations. Now the Federal Reserve has lowered interest rates to 1% again. This is where this horrible nightmare started. The massive printing of currency throughout the world will ultimately lead to a hyperinflationary bust. The law of unintended consequences can be devastating.

Early in the 1^st Reagan administration, Americans saved 12% of their income and household debt as a percentage of GDP was 63%. In 1980, the oldest Baby Boomers turned 34. They entered their prime earnings and spending years. This is when something went haywire with our great country. Deficit spending became fashionable for government, corporations and individuals. Dick “deficits don’t matter” Cheney was probably in his glory as the country ran up deficits of money, morals, and brains. The Boomers and our government chose to try and borrow and spend their way to prosperity. As we now know, Mr. Cheney’s advice about deficits not mattering was about as good as his belief that you can fire a shotgun in any direction without implications. The Boomer generation has freely made choices over the last quarter century that has brought us to the brink of a second Great Depression.

During the current Bush administration, Americans’ savings rate actually went below zero, while household debt as a percentage of GDP soared above 130%, a doubling in 25 years. These figures prove that the apparent prosperity of the last 25 years was an illusion. Beginning in 1982, Baby Boomers chose to take the easy road. Saving, investing and living within your means were cast aside as “Old School”. Boomers were handed a better future through the blood, sweat and tears of the “Greatest Generation”. Through their hubris, they’ve squandered that better future, the future of their children and imperiled our entire capitalist system. Between 1989 and 2007, credit-card debt soared from $238 billion to $937 billion, a 300% increase. Household liabilities that are in delinquency or default totaled $775 billion at the end of June, according to CreditForecast.com data. This is equal to 7.5% of all U.S. household debt, up from 3% just two years ago.

In the last five years, our live-for-today Boomers sucked over $3 trillion of equity out of their homes to fund their selfish lifestyles. At the end of June, there were 2.72 million mortgage loans in default at an annualized rate. For all of 2008, defaults will hit 3 million, up from approximately 1.5 million in 2007, and 1 million in 2006.

What “essentials” do the Boomers invest all this borrowed money in every year? The U.S. Census bureau provides the answers:

• $200 billion on furniture, appliances ($1,900 per household annually)
• $400 billion on vehicle purchases ($3,800 per household annually)
• $425 billion at restaurants ($4,000 per household annually)
• $9 billion at Starbucks (SBUX) ($85 per household annually)
• $250 billion on clothing ($2,400 per household annually)
• $100 billion on electronics ($950 per household annually)
• $60 billion on lottery tickets ($600 per household annually)
• $100 billion at gambling casinos ($950 per household annually)
• $60 billion on alcohol ($600 per household annually)
• $40 billion on smoking ($400 per household annually)
• $32 billion on spectator sports ($300 per household annually)
• $150 billion on entertainment ($1,400 per household annually)
• $100 billion on education ($950 per household annually)
• $300 billion to charity ($2,900 per household annually)

The priorities of our Boomer led society are clearly born out in the above figures. We spend more eating out than we give to charity. We spend as much on big screen TVs and stereos as we do on education. This may explain why 37 million (12.5%) of all Americans live in poverty and our high school students trail the students of 25 other countries (including Latvia) in science and math knowledge. Our school system processes many more clueless morons who don’t know the candidates for President, versus intelligent, thoughtful, hard working, driven young people. The $160 billion spent on gambling is indicative of the get rich quick without hard work attitude of the Boomer generation. Even worse, households with income under $13,000 spend, on average, $645 a year on lottery tickets, about 9 percent of all their income. Our government feeds this addiction by siphoning off billions in taxes from these gambling revenues to redistribute as they see fit.

What the data proves is that Boomers love to shop and eat, whether they have the money or not. The top 100 retailers in the U.S. have 250,000 stores that generated $1.7 trillion of sales last year. How could America function without 31,000 McDonalds, 35,000 KFCs, Taco Bells, & Pizza Huts, 15,000 Starbucks, 7,000 Wal-Marts, 2,000 Home Depots, 4,000 K-Marts/Sears, and 8,000 Blockbusters? There are 91,000 shopping centers in the United States. The Advertising industry spends $275 billion per year to convince you to spend money you don’t have for things you don’t need. This generation lacks self control, morals, a work ethic, and savings ethic. Based on the recent actions of our government and corporate leaders, we seem to lack any ethics at all. It is immoral for the Boomer generation to run up $53 trillion in unfunded future liabilities in Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid to leave as our gift to future generations, while we live it up today. Optimists like to point out that Europe and Japan have much worse unfunded liability problems than the U.S. That is like taking pride in being the best looking horse at the glue factory. In the end, we’ll all still be glue.

The 25 year Boomer borrowing and spending binge is coming to an end. The hangover will be really bad. The Federal Reserve and Treasury are trying to keep the frat party going, but everyone is passed out on the floor. The Case Shiller housing data shows that the 20 largest cities have experienced an average 20% decline in price from their peaks. The futures index predicts a further 10% to 15% loss in value. There are 75 million owned homes in the U.S. One in six, or 12 million homeowners, owe more than the house is worth. With further expected losses, 20 million homeowners will eventually be underwater on their mortgage. In California, where home price declines will be 40% to 50%, half the homeowners in the State will owe more than the house is worth.

If you are one of these homeowners and can afford the mortgage payment, time will eventually bail you out. If you can’t afford the mortgage payment, you should lose the house to someone who can make the payment. This is the failure side of the creative destruction that is true capitalism. If the government steps in to subsidize and eliminate failure, the system will ultimately collapse.

Part two of the great Boomer credit contraction will be the collapse of credit card companies who have mailed out 27 billion credit card offers in the last five years. They are now reaping what they have sown. As Boomers could no longer borrow from their homes, they switched to credit cards to make mortgage payments and car payments. That well is running dry. The losses to card companies will make the losses in 2000 to 2002 seem like good times. Losses in the 1^st half of 2008 soared to $21 billion. Losses are expected to total $55 billion in the next year and a half. This brings me to the latest outrage perpetrated upon the U.S. citizens by Hank Paulson and his Treasury cronies.

The credit card industry, which collects 23% interest and $12 billion in late fees from consumers, is lining up to get their piece of the $700 billion bank handout. Capital One (COF) has just received a $3.6 billion injection from the American taxpayer, one week after projecting that their write-offs will be $7.2 billion in the next twelve months. This will allow them to send another million offers to more people who shouldn’t have a credit card. Why not? The taxpayer will pay, if the losses are too high. Why aren’t the pundits on CNBC outraged at this misuse of taxpayer money? Would the bankruptcy of Capital One hurt our country in any way?

The Great American Empire has begun its long slow decline. It may take a few generations to reach its nadir, but the poor decisions already made and crucial decisions postponed in the last 25 years by our Boomer dominated leadership has put our country on a path to a declining standard of living. The U.S. is like a punch drunk ex-champion boxer who still thinks he has what it takes, but is living off his old press clippings. He lived the good life, got fat and didn’t do the hard work required of a champion. A slew of young brash fighters are itching to take him down. It is just a matter of time.

In our heyday during the 1950s, manufacturing accounted for 25% of GDP. In 1980 it was still 22% of GDP. Today it is 12% of GDP. By 2010 it will be under 10% of GDP. Our Government bureaucracy, which contributes nothing to the advancement of our society, now is a larger portion of GDP than manufacturing. Services such as banking, retail sales, transportation, and health care now account for two-thirds of the value of U.S. GDP. We have become a nation of bureaucratic paper pushers. Past U.S. generations invented the airplane; invented the automobile; discovered penicillin; and built the Interstate highway system. The Baby Boom generation has invented credit default swaps; mortgage backed securities; the fast food drive thru window; discovered the cure for erectile dysfunction; and built bridges to nowhere. No wonder we’re in so much trouble.

Now that I have laid out our bleak future, I can tell you that, like Dickens’ Christmas Carol, this is only a vision of what might be. There is time to change our course before our ship wrecks on a jagged reef. David M. Walker, former Comptroller of the United States, at a recent Fiscal Wake Up Tour at the University of Pennsylvania, described what has been happening in this country for the last 25 years in one word – laggardship. The last six months have been a perfect example of laggardship. Our leaders have floundered from crisis to crisis, overreacting and blustering rather than leading. True leaders are proactive, not reactive. After not addressing our energy policy for decades, as soon as oil reached $140 a barrel, Congress lurched into action so their constituents would think they were leading. As our financial system has imploded, government “leaders” have flailed about with one rescue package after another and Congress looks for scapegoats. Meddling, tinkering, and non-enforcement of rules by Congress and other government bureaucracies caused the crisis that they are reacting to. Government creates the problems and then assumes even more power over our lives with their ridiculous “solutions”.

No one in Washington has shown an ounce of leadership in decades. True leadership requires strength of character, clear vision to see the future as it is, the bravery to make unpopular decisions, and the honesty to tell the public the unvarnished truth based on the facts.

The facts are: we have a $10.5 trillion national debt; $53 trillion of unfunded liabilities; a military empire that has U.S. troops in 117 countries and has spent $700 billion on a pre-emptive war that has killed over 4,000 Americans; a $60 billion trade deficit; an annual budget deficit that will exceed $1 trillion in the next year; a crumbling infrastructure with 156,000 structurally deficient bridges; almost total dependence on foreign oil; and an educational system that is failing miserably. We can not fund guns, butter, banks and now car companies without collapsing our system.

I truly hope that President Obama can rise to the occasion and become a true statesman and leader. David Walker lays out our dilemma:

The regular order in Washington is broken. We must move beyond crisis management approaches and start to address some of the key fiscal and other challenges facing this country if we want our future to be better than our past. Our fiscal time bomb is ticking, and the time for action is now!

Ultimately, it is up to the Baby Boom generation to change our country’s course. The oldest Boomer is 62 years old and the youngest 45 years old. It is time for Boomers to take a hard look in the mirror and rethink their priorities. It is time to cast aside the $88,000 Range Rovers, $1,200 Jimmy Choo boots, $5,000 Rolex watches and daily double lattes at Starbucks. It is time to live within your means, distinguish between needs and wants, reduce debt, save 10% of your income, make sure your kids get a good education, not try and keep up with the Joneses, show compassion for your fellow man, and possibly pay more taxes and get less benefits, for the good of the country. We must support true leaders like [former Comptroller General] David Walker and get rid of the old time corrupted politicians who want to keep the status quo. Texas Congressman Ron Paul gives the blunt truth that a true leader is willing to give:

Our government has lived beyond its means for decades. We now face a crucial juncture, at which we determine whether to continue down the path of debt, inflation, and government intervention or choose to return to the economics of the free market, which have been ignored for almost a century. Increased debt leads to higher taxes on future generations, while increased inflation diminishes the purchasing power of American families and destroys the dollar. No society has ever been achieved prosperity through indebtedness or inflation, and the United States is no exception. We cannot afford to continue our current policies of monetary expansion and unending bailouts. Unless we return to sound monetary policy, sharply reduce government expenditures, and realize that the government cannot act as a lender of last resort, we will drive our economy to ruin.

The Baby Boom generation has one last chance to change the course of U.S. history, keep us from wrecking in a storm of debt on the approaching jagged reef and shed the title of “Shallowest Generation”.

Comments

[Virginia79]

Twenty years ago, I only knew one person who had a BMW and he was a brain surgeon. Today, in the DC area, I'd say about 1 in 4 vehicles is a luxury vehicle. People are definitely buying more expensive cars and I don't think there are particularly more brain surgeons.

[Just Saying]

I came across your article and as a child of the 80's I want to say thank you for finally placing the blame on the real culprits. The only thing I I disagree with is that the Boomers are the one's to fix things.

"Ultimately, it is up to the Baby Boom generation to change our country’s course."

The younger generations will do the fixing as they have no other choice in the matter and have a different outlook on how to solve things. Most of the Boomers are still in the game and are unable to see the forest from the trees.

Basically "An old broom sweeps clean"

Despite watching Boomers cheat each other out of their future I am optimistic that things will get better. But it won't be done by a generation that spent most of their lives with the 'buy now pay later' mentality.

Boomers are a generation that have a wealth of knowledge and should now take on the role as advisers and let the next group in line have their turn at bat.

[yrraby]

Whilst the comments you make are obviously true, for the most part, so they are true for the ills of all generations. Go back to the Great Depression during the thirties and the war that followed it, which generation do you imagine got the blame for that. Go back still further to the first world war, a truly stupid waste of life and time, which generation do you imagine got the blame for that. Selfishness is a hallmark of the world we live in. So is making mistakes and dare I say it generelisations. Once again the press and the media are behind setting people at each others throats. In contrast to the current wholesale condemnation of the Baby Boomer generation, I think you should remember, that they fought for America in the Vietnam war (and many died) they have lavished more on their children than any generation previously (interestingly according to an American by the name of Rob Gettemy, a highly religious man running a site called 'A million people for Jesus', the baby Boomers are all child haters) and they have contributed a great deal of money in tax. They were also the first generation to realise that the human race was polluting the planet, not something America accepts I know, but it is so never the less. I feel that bashing the Baby Boomers has become a new topic, probably because those who like to write articles and spout for a living, have begun to realise there is limited millage left in bashing the Gays. I am a Baby Boomer, getting on for eighty million people were and you need to ask yourself, can you really lump such a large number of people together and write them off in this way, no of course you can't. They have not lived in isolation from other generations. They have shared government and industry with other generations, their progress or otherwise has been influenced by other generations. During the good times there were plenty of people from an older generation than the boomers, that enjoyed the comforts of retirement given to them, care for the elderly has improved overall during the boomer generation, at least it has in Europe, nothing much seems to improve in America, education health care research and gift aid have all grown during this time. It is high time we stopped this nonsense and realised that there are people good and bad in all generations. Speaking as a Baby Boomer I shall be glad when my time is done. I shall at least hear no more of the eternal belch of the press, the christian right wing and above probably all the self righteous American laying the blame at the door of everybody else.

[Amadeus38]

Love the Article! I'm a generation after the Boomers. It's no different in Canada where I reside.
My parents were the epitomy of the Boomer Generation. We lived in excess wealth growing up. It was the era where both parents worked because it meant more wealth, and the kids were raised by day-care. We went to church because it was fashionable. My mother gave 5.00 a week to the Church collection, which may not seem such a bad thing except that the annual income in our household likely neared 100,000.00, in the 1980s. My mother's take on helping others was two-fold; either she would rant that many people chose their own situations and could only blame themselves, and also she would often say that "Well, the poverty issue is just too big, so why really even try to attack it?"
My parents had a very immature view on society; they really couldn't sympathize with people who experienced financial hardships. They were certain that if someone was struggling to survive, it was a direct result of bad choices. My mother grew up in a low income household and swore to herself to achieve the pinnacle of material gains by any means necessary.
I'm not saying that everyone from that generation became the picture of selfishness, but by and large, the Boomers were excessive consumers who flaunted their wares. There was little regard for those of less fortune while they collected treasures for themselves.
My dad, at one point, asked his dad for some of the inheritance money before the guy died, so he could better his lifestyle. If my child ever does that to me I'll slap him!
We lived in a castle of a home and my parents sought out
"society" types to rub elbows with. Our lives were a postcard of the Dream. My mother constantly told me that I needed to become someone important, and not merely a blue collar laborer.
She flaunted her cars, joined the elite circles and fitness clubs, you name it. She poked fun at other peoples'; landscapes, their homes, their relationships. Sick excess and greed...me me me.
I was made to feel like a failure because I chose Culinary Arts as a vocation. Now mom and dad live in Florida. They have 4 million dollars in the bank, yet they both still work; not because they have to in order to stay in the country; they're both full citizens. They fear that something bad could happen and that 4 million may not be enough.
They are in their late 60s. It makes me sick. The whole Boomer era was one of excess and self-servitude. I read a poem once, regarding the Boomers. This is the last stanza of it
"Here we godless people lived, and all that is left is a thousand lost golfballs."

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[ThatGuyInTheBack]

A few points to remember:

Most of the world's wealth, both imaginary and real, was created in the last 50 years by the boomer generation. The wealth of roads, pipelines and infrastructure you enjoy today.

Many boomers are putting their children through college AND taking care of aging pre-boomer parents. Saving was just not an option. Neither were ipods and SUVs.

Boomers collectively, did nothing but believe in capitalism. The gaming of the political/economic system was and is done by the wealthy oligarchy of the country. This is not a generational issue. It's a haves vs have-not issue. Until we recognize that the wealthy are another branch of government and are regulated accordingly, we are doomed to this boom and bust nonsense.

[MikeL8on]

Another point of view; IMHO the baby boomers got the shaft. When they were young they paid very high mortgage interest rates, transferring wealth to their parents. Baby Boomers pay 15.3% social security (the half your employer pays comes out of your potential earnings) to fund their parent's retirement, who paid 4%, another transfer of wealth to their parents. Baby Boomers pay Medicare taxes for health insurance for their parents, another transfer of wealth to their parents. Baby Boomers pay a higher percentage of their income for taxes than their parents, another transfer of wealth to their parents. And now just as retirement is near, the stock market crashes and the Baby Boomers are not going to get to retire like their parents. I am not blaming the crash on their parents, but blaming the Baby Boomers for their plight is equivalent to blaming the rape victim. When it comes to interest cost and income tax costs the Baby Boomers were given a bad deal and they will never be able to recover.

[James Quinn]

You're funny.

You should love this article. Let me know what you think.

www.financialsense.com...

On Feb 11 01:52 AM Proud Boomer wrote:

> X-
>
> Watch it. You know nothing of what it was like to work in the 70's
> and 80's, and what has transpired culturally from that time to now.
> You are a remorselessly negative DWEEB, like most Xers, isn't life
> today good in any way? The comfort and convenience you have is largely
> due to the hard work of the Baby Boom generation. It may be that
> you didn't have the benefits we did, you being born in the 70's and
> growing up in increasingly alienated environment, not knowing the
> more old fashioned small town ways prevalent in the 50's and early
> 60's. You did miss out but that certainly wasn't Baby Boomers' fault
> as for example I was 15 when Xers started being born in the 70's.
> I didn't care for the 70's, especially compared to the early 60's
> but at age 7 in 1962 I hardly think you can blame my age group for
> losing Camelot.
>
> There have been alot of complex socio-economic forces at work throughout
> history, but the accomplishment of my generation (certainly not me,
> but the most productive of my generation), is that we got back the
> beautiful prosperity and dreamy times of the early 60's by the time
> year 2000 came along. Things actually got better in the 80's and
> 90's than what they had been in the 70's and last half of the 60's.
>
>
> The author of this blog is a complete jerk and ought to be taken
> to the back of the woodshed and have the crap beaten out of him for
> dissing his own generation. Time is not done, the world hasn't ended
> because of this severe recession, and it isn't boomers who are in
> debt, DWEEBOS. Also, Republicanism and conservatism including GWB
> were facilitated by generations X and younger, and others who didn't
> care for boomer liberalism, you people helped elect Bush along with
> backwoods boomers. This guy was horrible with economics but did anyone
> care as prosperity continued? As the good 1madboomer above noted,
> there's plenty of blame to go around. The legitimate point one could
> make about shortcomings of boomers is the polarization of their political
> positions.
>
> On Nov 05 06:12 PM HARM wrote:

[Booming Future]

X-

Watch it. You know nothing of what it was like to work in the 70's and 80's, and what has transpired culturally from that time to now. You are a remorselessly negative DWEEB, like most Xers, isn't life today good in any way? The comfort and convenience you have is largely due to the hard work of the Baby Boom generation. It may be that you didn't have the benefits we did, you being born in the 70's and growing up in increasingly alienated environment, not knowing the more old fashioned small town ways prevalent in the 50's and early 60's. You did miss out but that certainly wasn't Baby Boomers' fault as for example I was 15 when Xers started being born in the 70's. I didn't care for the 70's, especially compared to the early 60's but at age 7 in 1962 I hardly think you can blame my age group for losing Camelot.

There have been alot of complex socio-economic forces at work throughout history, but the accomplishment of my generation (certainly not me, but the most productive of my generation), is that we got back the beautiful prosperity and dreamy times of the early 60's by the time year 2000 came along. Things actually got better in the 80's and 90's than what they had been in the 70's and last half of the 60's.

The author of this blog is a complete jerk and ought to be taken to the back of the woodshed and have the crap beaten out of him for dissing his own generation. Time is not done, the world hasn't ended because of this severe recession, and it isn't boomers who are in debt, DWEEBOS. Also, Republicanism and conservatism including GWB were facilitated by generations X and younger, and others who didn't care for boomer liberalism, you people helped elect Bush along with backwoods boomers. This guy was horrible with economics but did anyone care as prosperity continued? As the good 1madboomer above noted, there's plenty of blame to go around. The legitimate point one could make about shortcomings of boomers is the polarization of their political positions.

On Nov 05 06:12 PM HARM wrote:

> "The boomers footed the multi trillion dollar bill to waged a
> decades long cold war against the greatest evil empire empire in
> history - and won - saving the world from communist enslavement and
> bringing freedom to Eastern Europe and Russia,. WW2 pales in comparison.
>
>
> Baby boomers have footed the bill for trillions of dollars in US
> foreign aid for decades - tell me what other country has done even
> a fraction of that?
>
> Baby boomers have paid for the 'war on poverty' by the Great Society
> - just look at the great standard of living the 'poor' people have
> in this country. As one person in India trying to get into the US
> said "I want to live in a country where the poor people are fat".
>
>
> This hardly sounds like selfishness to me."
>
>
> Oh, Lordy... so many fictions, where to start?
>
> Boomers did not actually *pay* for any of the above, which is one
> of the reasons why per-capita government and personal debt levels
> are at all-time highs, as the author has already pointed out.

>
> Aid to the poor --aka old school "socialism"-- went out of vogue
> during the Reagan Administration ('Welfare Cadillac Queens' and whatnot)
> and social program defunding accelerated under following administrations
> including Clinton's (welfare reform). Unfortunately, corporate socialism
> and unchecked military spending more than made up for any savings,
> by a huge margin.
>
> As a Gen-Xer, I have been geniunely "poor", as in one unemployment
> or min-wage paycheck away from homelessness --and not for laziness,
> lack of skills, education or willingness to take menial jobs, either.
> I doubt many non-blue collar/minority Boomers can relate, hence the
> warped view of the "great standard of living" U.S. poor supposedly
> enjoy.
>
> Boomers were born into an America of broadly shared prosperity, virtually
> free higher education, cheap housing and medical care, high manufacturing
> output, a large trade surplus, an expanding middle class, and an
> almost debt-free government.
>
> Boomers are leaving my (and future generations) with prosperity for
> the very few, sky-high college costs mostly financed with debt, a
> massive housing bubble, the most expensive per-capita medical costs
> ever, a shrinking manufacturing base, an enormous trade deficit,
> a shrinking middle class, and government in hock to the tune of $11
> Trillion + $53Trillion more in future unfunded liabilities.
>
> I wish I had written this article. Kudos to the author for a job
> well done, and the courage to tell it like it really is, without
> pulling any punches.

[1madboomer]

First of all, I'm a '48 boomer. I have been working since the age of twelve when I had two paper routes. One in morning and one in the evening. I mowed lawns, put up hay, and cleared land with a scythe, a sickle and an axe. I worked in home construction and the food service industry. All of this before I graduated high school. I served in the military during the Viet Nam War. I have been working shift work in a factory for the last 38 yrs. I put 5 children through school. I am practically debt free except for the last few years of a 30yr mortgage. I have saved enough to tell the cry baby Gen X ers that they can go ahead and buy their big screen TV and fancy car and not worry about having to take care of anyone but themselves.
There's plenty of blame to go around for this mess we are in. I think it is a real shame this author tries to lay it all on the hard-working, self-reliant folks of my generation.

[Gary Lamont]

The biggest indication of weath and dysfunctional families in the baby boom generation can now be found in the family drug intervention california programs. They simply are left behind by our own values!

[User 297258]

> The United States National Debt versus Percent of Gross Domestic Product
> graph clearly shows that there is a distinct increase in dept as a percentage of
> GDP. This is a complete result of Supply-Side Economics. Give the rich tax
> breaks and they will leverage it more to make themselves more money.

Whaa? How are individuals and companies contributing to the *National* debt? Only the government can create national debt. The debt is where it is, because our statesmen have exchanged the wisdom of our founders for the foolishness of modern world sentiments, and because we have become a near-direct democracy, and because the people who make up that democracy are scared, foolish, short-sighted, greedy sheep. We have been adopting socialism by degrees for over 150 years, slowly degrading the single most powerful attribute of our nation's economy: the ability to adapt to reality. We now operate on the belief that we can make reality adapt to us.

Also, the rich don't leverage themselves with money they saved in "tax breaks". That's poor person-thinking. They *keep* tax breaks. They leverage themselves with money loaned to them by the Fed at below-market rates. Money that the Fed drained from *your* pocket when they created it. Money that the Fed won't loan to *you*.

Look no further than our government, its creations, and its policies for the roots of our national debt. And if you want to rip capital away from "all those rich people" you had better find a principle to do it by; a principle which shows that you actually have an ownership claim in part of their product. If you take the short route and just vote it into place, the principle you will have appealed to will be "might makes right". Someday you'll be a minority on an issue, and you won't like that principle so much then.

[User 303009]

On Oct 31 05:43 AM Alan von Altendorf wrote:

> Hmm. Well written. Thank you. Wish I could agree with the conclusion,
> but you were much nearer the solution when you admitted that playing
> by the rules made you a chump, an enabler, who implicitly allowed
> the grifters to snowball wildly out of control. How you believe that
> Barack Obama and a Democrat Congress can save anyone is inexplicable.

Alan, there is one plot in this article that says EVERYTHING. The United States National Debt versus Percent of Gross Domestic Product graph clearly shows that there is a distinct increase in dept as a percentage of GDP. This is a complete result of Supply-Side Economics. Give the rich tax breaks and they will leverage it more to make themselves more money. How do "save anyone" is you reverse the effect; tax the rich again. This is what Obama is going to do. Note, when Clinton took office, there was a small dip in the graph a few years later, but W. Bush made the plot move back up again with his tax breaks. Republicans can NOT get this through their heads...tax breaks for the upper-class and large corporations is BAD!!!! It causes an increase in dept because the upper-class and corporations use this money to leverage. Leveraging is great for making money but is risky and when the leveraging fails, it is the country that pays, just as we are paying now.

How do you fix this...tax the wealthy. And not just income but excess wealth and assets. Don't allow CEOs to make $30M in 5 years and now live in luxury while the rest of us have to pay for their errors. Make THEM pay now with an Assets Tax of wealth over $15M. This will funnel money back into the government and allow them to start dwindling downt the dept.

[DSMOV]

I can remember when Apple Corp. was a educational based company supplying cutting-edge instruments like computers for the classroom in the 1980's. Fast forward to today and it is reasonable to assume that Apple has done a complete shift away from the progress of education to attacking the classroom with their IPODS and IPHONES. Its more profitable right, plus they had decades worth of analysis about the American education model and classroom. These new instruments stimulated young minds away from learning-right there in the classroom. Parents are too busy feeling good and making more kids than realizing what's going on at school. That's why parents buy their kids IPOND and IPHONES so they won't have to parent as much. Kids will tell the teacher all day how they need their cell phone and if you touch it their parents "will be mad at you." People were much less stimulated in years past and were able to intake more information. Ethics was a virtue unassailable by video games, mpegs, wmas and the internet which like a flue allows filth to reach minors-it truly shapes their being. Minors being able to watch flash porn on the internet all day. So if in the above article concerns are raised about the education of Boomers by the Greatist Generation and its consequences, we should be deeply worried about our current and next generations of youth. All I've seen are: parental indifference, mass lowering of expectations, multiculturalism, real pay declines and large classrooms. Strategically and theoretically, to keep this credit scheme of debt going on in the real world you need dumb persons not educated ethical ones coming from the secondary school. So a 30 year war on education has been in place here in America. If you don't believe why don't you leave your cushy job and come to where I work and see for yourself. What America needs is resistance by the best minds and the leaders of the people from this attack upon our homeland AND OUR CHILDREN. NCLB is a sham and must be revoked. NCLB is like a question mark inside a riddle wrapped in an enigma. It is designed to ignore problems and limit successful proven teachers from receiving credentialing.

[Socialist]

This is an impressive list of bitches about a system that you (doctors) created. You may not have the control now, but you did during the time that it took for it to go to hell in a handbasket. You influenced the hospitals' policy before they went corporate. You set prices for insurance companies as "consultants". You colluded with those same insurance companies to make a joke out of worker's compensation laws and you abetted the setting of borderline deadly standards for our Food and Drug administration. If you aren't now excluded from the "free market" pressures as you once were, don't ask us to feel sorry for you while your collection attorneys work to kick us out of our homes because of bad timing for an appendectomy. As far as your discounting 85% of your fee to those who couldn't pay you, I say that you have to be one out of 1000. I commend you if this is true, but doubt that you can find another in your country club that can make the same claim.

On Nov 16 09:11 PM macbones wrote:

> Doctors are part of the problem? So do you even know what doctors
> are actually paid for the procedures and services they provide? And
> once you look that up on some medicare site, then multiply by 0.5-
> thats the amount after office overhead- you know, in addition to
> the $50K in malpractice our 9 providers each pay, the salaries of
> the 110 employees that we provide jobs for, and the cost of red
> tape thanks to reams of government regulation and oversight. Then
> multiply that figure by 0.5 again, b/c as a "rich" physician I pay
> over 50% of my income to one tax or another. So when grandma gets
> that knee replaced and 90 days of included aftercare, please don't
> think of it as $1200- to her greedy doctor. Think of it as $250-,
> because thats what it is. As a provider who also accepts medicaid,
> purely because where else would these non-working, smoking, drinking,
> difficult patients in need of care go, I find it particularly offensive
> that someone would suggest that I'm operating on them to bilk the
> system when a lot of their surgeries reimburse under $100. Not a
> free market? You are right there. My payments (from medicare/ medicaid)
> are set by some bureaucrat and are in no way negotiable. Payments
> are negotiable if you don't have insurance, and guess what, if someone
> needs surgery to walk and doesn't have insurance, I'll waive 85%
> of the fee or more. I can't say, "write off," because the IRS doesn't
> recognize that as a loss, even though the fee does not cover my malpractice
> insurance to do the surgery. You have insurance and can't negotiate?
> Duh. Your insurer negotiated FOR you- in effect, you negotiated when
> you selected your (crappy) policy. Upset that your (crappy) policy
> costs so much? Go ask Bill Maguire, former CEO of united healthcare
> why insurance costs so much- for delivering a good PROFIT to shareholders,
> Bill walked away with over 1 BILLION dollars in compensation (If
> I started practice 1500 years PRIOR to the birth of Christ, I'd have
> a billion dollars. Thats how much a billion is). He was taxed at
> 15% on most of that by the way.
>
> There may be a lot of reasons Ron Paul isn't the answer. Assuming
> that he's a greedy doctor because he spent 12 years in higher education
> studying and working a hundred hours a week as a student and resident
> slave before entering practice and working 90 hours a week and living
> within his means to accumulate a lump of wealth is certainly not
> one of them.
>
> Piss off.

[macbones]

Doctors are part of the problem? So do you even know what doctors are actually paid for the procedures and services they provide? And once you look that up on some medicare site, then multiply by 0.5- thats the amount after office overhead- you know, in addition to the $50K in malpractice our 9 providers each pay, the salaries of the 110 employees that we provide jobs for, and the cost of red tape thanks to reams of government regulation and oversight. Then multiply that figure by 0.5 again, b/c as a "rich" physician I pay over 50% of my income to one tax or another. So when grandma gets that knee replaced and 90 days of included aftercare, please don't think of it as $1200- to her greedy doctor. Think of it as $250-, because thats what it is. As a provider who also accepts medicaid, purely because where else would these non-working, smoking, drinking, difficult patients in need of care go, I find it particularly offensive that someone would suggest that I'm operating on them to bilk the system when a lot of their surgeries reimburse under $100. Not a free market? You are right there. My payments (from medicare/ medicaid) are set by some bureaucrat and are in no way negotiable. Payments are negotiable if you don't have insurance, and guess what, if someone needs surgery to walk and doesn't have insurance, I'll waive 85% of the fee or more. I can't say, "write off," because the IRS doesn't recognize that as a loss, even though the fee does not cover my malpractice insurance to do the surgery. You have insurance and can't negotiate? Duh. Your insurer negotiated FOR you- in effect, you negotiated when you selected your (crappy) policy. Upset that your (crappy) policy costs so much? Go ask Bill Maguire, former CEO of united healthcare why insurance costs so much- for delivering a good PROFIT to shareholders, Bill walked away with over 1 BILLION dollars in compensation (If I started practice 1500 years PRIOR to the birth of Christ, I'd have a billion dollars. Thats how much a billion is). He was taxed at 15% on most of that by the way.

There may be a lot of reasons Ron Paul isn't the answer. Assuming that he's a greedy doctor because he spent 12 years in higher education studying and working a hundred hours a week as a student and resident slave before entering practice and working 90 hours a week and living within his means to accumulate a lump of wealth is certainly not one of them.

Piss off.

On Oct 31 07:54 AM copperbaron wrote:

> iAccountant siad - "In my opinion it will take a total collapse of
> the system to bring the type of change that you are referring to.
> Is this the beginning?"
>
> I believe it may be. We are seeing the joints coming apart, the beams
> sagging and about to crack under the weight of massive debt and enormous
> corruption. Paulson is just trying to steal a few billion more for
> his beloved financial organized crime rings, before he retires to
> a life of wealth and luxury, under very heavy security.
>
> Many hail Ron Paul as some sort of visionary, but I would argue differently.
> He espouses "Free markets" but made all of his money as a doctor.
> As anyone who bothers to examine the facts knows, doctors bill enormous
> fees to patients (and Medicare/Medicaid) in a system that in no way
> resembles a "free market."
>
> Rather, it is a rigged market that controls the number of available
> doctors, and legislates their financial advantage, to an extraordinary
> degree. The A.M.A. is the most powerful and mercenary union in this
> nation's history, and is sucking the country dry.
>
> I would never vote for Ron Paul on purely moral grounds - he was
> part of the problem, in my opinion. If you are a wealthy doctor (one
> of the limited number allowed to be 'licensed' that is) then it is
> easy to throw stones and criticize others for debt. These jokers
> live in a fantasy world, just like the IB types shuffling paper around
> and committing fraud for million-dollar bonuses. Their sense of true
> economics is deeply distorted by their own self-manipulated and outsized
> pay package.

[Socialist]

Don't forget that the "greatest generation" also included Bush's grandfather who was deeply involved in international banking, tried to overthrow our government and collaborated with the Nazis. How much different would our present position be if he had been held accountable instead of rewarded by a government as corrupt as he was at it's core?

This was the first generation off the farm and their political naivety enabled the establishment of the powers that still control the wealth of our nation. As much as we (boomers) benefited from their work ethic and frugality we also suffered from their ignorance. They allowed the first foreign knock off products to compete with American goods and decided that the Marshall plan was a good start toward global domination. They were the CEO's that first hired illegal immigrants and took high paying jobs offshore. They have not been retired so long that we can say that they weren't complicit in the short sighted profit taking that has brought us to where we are now. That flame was spread more like a grassfire than the passing of a torch. Those who didn't directly contribute to our country's descent enabled it through their ignorance of their own economy.

Perhaps workers will end up better for our misery if we can rise above that level of uninformed sheepdom and forge a "real" economic system out of the ashes of the failed pseudo-capitalistic model that we have been propping up for the last 30 years. That has been the sin of us "boomers". We have held a false reverence for a cruel and inequitable system that produces poverty in equal proportion to wealth. The purchase of what should have been ours to start with may be expensive, but it is now the path to the revolution that was inevitable all along. If the taxpayers don't see a return on this investment they will storm the bastions of wealth and declare their rightful ownership of our nation. The money changers know this and they are only attempting to hide behind the politicians that they bought. Their hired buffoons won't make good cover for them when it hits the fan though. You really can't expect to throw a quarter of the population out of their homes and price their food too high for them to afford and expect to keep "civil order" for long. We will either get a system that works or we will make one from scratch. Enough of us know how to make our way in the world to teach others and we will have the mansions of the current wealthy to use for firewood.

[Rick's Picks]

There is zero chance that Obama and a left-wing Congress will not pursue with reckless abandon the FDR/Keynesian model in a doomed attempt to lift us from the Second Great Depression. This is despite overwhelming evidence that Keynesian quackery did nothing to ameliorate the economic miseries of the 1930s.

We can only pray that it does not take another global war to get the economy moving again. At the very least, the process will require a collapse in America's standard of living so that our wages are competitive with Asia's. We'll need to emerge from the abyss with a competitive manufacturing capability, since the world will have little need for "financial powerhouses" adept at creating only synthetic wealth.