The Boomer Bust Here we are in the baby boom cosmos. What have we wrought?

[Selene]

Self is like fish, proverbially speaking. Give a man a fish and you've fed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and, if he turns into a dry-fly catch-and-release angling fanatic up to his liver in icy water wearing ridiculous waders and an absurd hat, pestering trout with 3-pound test line on a $1,000 graphite rod, and going on endlessly about Royal Coachman lures that he tied himself using muskrat fur and partridge feathers…well, at least his life partner is glad to have him out of the house.

http://The Boomer Bust Here we are in the baby boom cosmos. What have we wrought?

I love the way this man writes.

A...

[Mikee]

Me too.

P.J. O'Rourke is a blast. ["Boomer" for "a lot of fun"]

[Link that works]

[Frediano]

The most obvious fact of the Boomer's demographic is that we did not conceive and create ourselves. Re-create maybe, but not create.

Neither did the Boomers 'save SS' in the 80s by raising taxes on an already surplus paying demographic just to spend it immediately, faster. Those perps are all dead. While they were being fleeced, most of the Boomers had no idea that the -extra- almost 9% of payroll they were asked to fork over for their entire working lives would someday show up as empty IOUs, thrown at their kids, with the demand that they be over-taxed -a second time to create the very same 'asset.'

But...what species does this to their kids? And so, back to a hard look at how and why the Boomer's were over-conceived in such large numbers.

The Greatest Generation is gone. Their generational pain was all front end loaded. Their youth wasn't spend in Disneyland, it was spent in the Depression and then fighting and winning WWII, a monumental effort that wrestled every free-world opportunity since from the jaws of a slobbering world selling Totalitarian alternatives. The Disneyland of Existence that the Boomers erupted into did not come about without extreme generational effort.

And so, we Boomers need to look at SS as what it was; a one time thank you to the Greatest Generation, who ponied up more than their share of generational pain and effort. But today, with the last of the Greatest Generation fading, it is time to turn to our kids and take on our share of generational pain-- to finally pay the bill by not demanding that they pony up the political promises of politicians long dead. No, its time to convert SS from a (politically)defined benefit program to a true pay-as-you-go defined contribution program. In that form, SS will never be an unsustainable burden on our children, and as well, defines generational fairness.

Yes, it means less benefits than politically promised by politicians long dead. But what species does this to its young? As well, accepting less benefits than promised is not like losing a leg in Normandy, so buck up.

Want higher benefits? Then do what the Greatest Generation did. Win a war. Raise more kids. Bandage their skin knees, send them to school. If, instead, as a generation we opt for the second vacation home and Bass boat, then fine, but life is choices.

Does the Boomer generation have what it takes to not hose over its kids? Not looking good. OTOH, their kids are largely begging for more of the same. So who is to blame for that? Who raised and educated their kids?

Poet Robert Frost, in the early 60s, right before his death, asked what he thought of the New Generation: "I'd have great hope for them, if only we could give them the gift of our struggle. Alas, we are a success, and cannot."