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Ya-ta Boy
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
Location: Established in 1994
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 Posted: Mon Oct 15, 2007 12:37 pm Post subject: First Baby Boomer Files for Social Security: Your Views? |
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(From Yahoo)
The nation's first baby boomer applied for Social Security benefits Monday, signaling the start of an expected avalanche of applications from the post World War II war generation...
Casey-Kirschling, who now lives in Maryland, was born one second after midnight on Jan. 1, 1946, making her the first baby boomer � a generation of nearly 80 million born from 1946 to 1964...
Casey-Kirschling will be eligible for benefits after she turns 62 next year...
An estimated 10,000 people a day will become eligible for Social Security benefits over the next two decades, Astrue said...
The Social Security trust fund, if left alone, is projected to go broke in 2041, though Astrue said he hopes Congress will address the issue, perhaps after the 2008 presidential...
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071015/ap_on_go_ot/boomer_social_security
The Question is: Will the younger generations allow the government to betray their grandparents? |
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blaseblasphemener
Joined: 01 Jun 2006
Location: There's a voice, keeps on calling me, down the road, that's where I'll always be
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| Posted: Mon Oct 15, 2007 4:12 pm Post subject: |
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I don't they will have a choice, unless the gov't just prints more wads of money, and everyone keeps believing it's worth something.
The jig is up folks. 75% of America's GDP comes from the housing market and consumer spending. What do you think is going to happen when all these baby boomers start going on social security, don't have adequate savings, start/continue downsizing to make ends meet, all the while doing it while the dollar buys less and less. The party is over, and hard times are ahead. Unless you believe India and China, or Europe, can somehow keep the U.S. market buoyant. It seems to defy all logic though. |
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igotthisguitar
Joined: 08 Apr 2003
Location: South Korea (Permanent Vacation)
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| Posted: Mon Oct 15, 2007 5:14 pm Post subject: |
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We're next.
If social security even exists when Gen-Xers hit retirement age 
Damn well better be if we're paying into it!  |
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Kuros
Joined: 27 Apr 2004
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| Posted: Mon Oct 15, 2007 5:40 pm Post subject: Re: First Baby Boomer Files for Social Security: Your Views? |
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| Ya-ta Boy wrote: |
The Question is: Will the younger generations allow the government to betray their grandparents? |
Social Security is asinine.
Take a buck from a worker. Drain 16 cents of it through transfer/bureacracy costs. Tax another 15-30 cents of it. Then give what's left to an old person.
The Baby Boomers are on notice: we have a global economy now. Invest. |
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Ya-ta Boy
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
Location: Established in 1994
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| Posted: Mon Oct 15, 2007 8:05 pm Post subject: |
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Kuros,
I take it your short answer is, 'Yes'. |
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blaseblasphemener
Joined: 01 Jun 2006
Location: There's a voice, keeps on calling me, down the road, that's where I'll always be
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| Posted: Mon Oct 15, 2007 9:52 pm Post subject: |
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| Ron Paul is smart. |
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Atavistic
Joined: 22 May 2006
Location: How totally stupid that Korean doesn't show in this area.
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| Posted: Mon Oct 15, 2007 9:54 pm Post subject: Re: First Baby Boomer Files for Social Security: Your Views? |
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| Ya-ta Boy wrote: |
The Question is: Will the younger generations allow the government to betray their grandparents? |
Oh that's a good question right up there with "have you quit beating your wife yet?" |
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Vicissitude
Joined: 27 Feb 2007
Location: Chef School
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| Posted: Tue Oct 16, 2007 1:45 am Post subject: |
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| igotthisguitar wrote: |
We're next.
If social security even exists when Gen-Xers hit retirement age
Damn well better be if we're paying into it! |
I have no hope that I'll ever see a penny of it back. The whole system is a complete joke! You've got old people who've never worked a day in their lives collecting their spouses' checks while they collect pensions and live off their huge investments or savings. Meanwhile people who busted their tails (cleaning up after senior citizens and wind up with a broken back) are forced to live on a mear 150 a month. Social Security is not fair! For the rich, it's a really good deal but for the poor and working class it sure isn't. |
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Kuros
Joined: 27 Apr 2004
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| Posted: Tue Oct 16, 2007 5:25 am Post subject: |
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| Ya-ta Boy wrote: |
Kuros,
I take it your short answer is, 'Yes'. |
Betrayal is a pretty charged word, Ya-Ta, given that none of us had a choice of entering into any sort of contract.
Do you deny any of the following:
There are simply not enough descendents of the baby boomers to present a smooth financing of their old age.
Social Security payments have already fallen behind a reasonable minimal standard of living for most elderly.
Most of Congress is composed of Baby Boomers; and if not, a vast majority are at least to old to be Gen Xers much less Gen Y (my generation).
Given the above, my question is, what power does our generation have to 'betray' the entrenched elderly-entitlement class? |
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Ya-ta Boy
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
Location: Established in 1994
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| Posted: Thu Oct 18, 2007 5:12 am Post subject: |
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| Quote: |
Do you deny any of the following:
There are simply not enough descendents of the baby boomers to present a smooth financing of their old age.
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When I graduated high school and started paying into Social Security, there were 189 million of us. Now there are 300 million of us. I'd say there are enough of us.
I agree with you that none of us had any choice.
I believe that a substantial part of the insecurity most Americans feel is the result of reactionaries perpetually challenging the concept of a solid, reliable safety net for all of us. (That is not to minimize the general government incompetence that is real.) But I do feel it is a self-fulfilling prophecy when Bush and Ron Paul keep talking about cancelling/abolishing Social Security. The more insecure they make people feel, the more people feel desperate and are open to some other/any other idea.
I'm 58. I have my savings and investments, but SS is also part of my retirement plan. Take that portion away, and I'll end up in a cardboard box under a bridge. |
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blaseblasphemener
Joined: 01 Jun 2006
Location: There's a voice, keeps on calling me, down the road, that's where I'll always be
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| Posted: Thu Oct 18, 2007 5:18 am Post subject: |
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http://www.gladwell.com/2006/2006_08_28_a_risk.html
This isn't about social security, but the ideas apply to pensions and demographics. Here's a portion:
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The key to understanding the pension business is something called the "dependency ratio," and dependency ratios are best understood in the context of countries. In the past two decades, for instance, Ireland has gone from being one of the most economically backward countries in Western Europe to being one of the strongest: its growth rate has been roughly double that of the rest of Europe. There is no shortage of conventional explanations. Ireland joined the European Union. It opened up its markets. It invested well in education and economic infrastructure. It's a politically stable country with a sophisticated, mobile workforce.
But, as the Harvard economists David Bloom and David Canning suggest in their study of the "Celtic Tiger," of greater importance may have been a singular demographic fact. In 1979, restrictions on contraception that had been in place since Ireland's founding were lifted, and the birth rate began to fall. In 1970, the average Irishwoman had 3.9 children. By the mid-nineteen-nineties, that number was less than two. As a result, when the Irish children born in the nineteen-sixties hit the workforce, there weren't a lot of children in the generation just behind them. Ireland was suddenly free of the enormous social cost of supporting and educating and caring for a large dependent population. It was like a family of four in which, all of a sudden, the elder child is old enough to take care of her little brother and the mother can rejoin the workforce. Overnight, that family doubles its number of breadwinners and becomes much better off.
This relation between the number of people who aren't of working age and the number of people who are is captured in the dependency ratio. In Ireland during the sixties, when contraception was illegal, there were ten people who were too old or too young to work for every fourteen people in a position to earn a paycheck. That meant that the country was spending a large percentage of its resources on caring for the young and the old. Last year, Ireland's dependency ratio hit an all-time low: for every ten dependents, it had twenty-two people of working age. That change coincides precisely with the country's extraordinary economic surge.
Demographers estimate that declines in dependency ratios are responsible for about a third of the East Asian economic miracle of the postwar era; this is a part of the world that, in the course of twenty-five years, saw its dependency ratio decline thirty-five per cent. Dependency ratios may also help answer the much-debated question of whether India or China has a brighter economic future. Right now, China is in the midst of what Joseph Chamie, the former director of the United Nations' population division, calls the "sweet spot." In the nineteen-sixties, China brought down its birth rate dramatically; those children are now grown up and in the workforce, and there is no similarly sized class of dependents behind them. India, on the other hand, reduced its birth rate much more slowly and has yet to hit the sweet spot. Its best years are ahead.
The logic of dependency ratios, of course, works equally powerfully in reverse. If your economy benefits by having a big bulge of working-age people, then your economy will have a harder time of it when that bulge generation retires, and there are relatively few workers to take their place. For China, the next few decades will be more difficult. "China will peak with a 1-to-2.6 dependency ratio between 2010 and 2015," Bloom says. "But then it's back to a little over 1-to-1.5 by 2050. That's a pretty dramatic change. Thirty per cent of the Chinese population will be over sixty by 2050. That's four hundred and thirty-two million people." |
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Ya-ta Boy
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
Location: Established in 1994
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| Posted: Thu Oct 18, 2007 5:48 am Post subject: |
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In 1807 pretty much everyone lived on the farm. When grandma and grandpa got too old to work, one (or more) of their children gave them a rocking chair by the fireplace and took care of them.
By 1907 the economy had changed. Only the captains of industry really had much choice about that. They insisted that labor be flexible and family structure and the economy change. That meant that families broke apart.
When society shatters the traditional family to serve the modern economic model, something must be put in its place to care for those who have passed the productive age. It is only reasonable and fair.
The present model may not be the most efficient. I am open to alternative models. I am realistic enough to know that one attempt may not be the best attempt. All I ask is that society work carefully to develop a better system and not penalize those who were in the system too early. |
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mithridates
Joined: 03 Mar 2003
Location: President's office, Korean Space Agency
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| Posted: Thu Oct 18, 2007 6:46 am Post subject: |
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| Ya-ta Boy wrote: |
| The present model may not be the most efficient. I am open to alternative models. I am realistic enough to know that one attempt may not be the best attempt. All I ask is that society work carefully to develop a better system and not penalize those who were in the system too early. |
Ooh, that's exactly what Ron Paul says. Be careful. |
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Ya-ta Boy
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
Location: Established in 1994
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| Posted: Thu Oct 18, 2007 6:55 am Post subject: |
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Ooh, that's exactly what Ron Paul says. Be careful.
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Thanks. I'll reconsider my wording. |
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twg
Joined: 02 Nov 2006
Location: Getting some fresh air...
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| Posted: Thu Oct 18, 2007 10:30 am Post subject: |
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| Quote: |
| First Baby Boomer Files for Social Security: Your Views? |
Has Steve Mcgarrett raced home yet? |
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