Now that Baby Boomers are heading into retirement and thus won’t be paying taxes anymore, and their Millennial children are working age adults, they’re suddenly terribly concerned about the burden posed on the younger generations of the present and future due to the national debt they helped run up. But the Boomers are forgetting something: generation after generation of Americans has been “burdening the next generation” – but no one ever has to pay the thing off.
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Ted Rall
Ted Rall is a syndicated political cartoonist for Andrews McMeel Syndication and WhoWhatWhy.org and Counterpoint. He is a contributor to Centerclip and co-host of "The Final Countdown" talk show on Radio Sputnik. He is a graphic novelist and author of many books of art and prose, and an occasional war correspondent. He is, recently, the author of the graphic novel "2024: Revisited."
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Ted,
The line from the Bible comes to mind: “For they sow the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind.”
As does the first portion of Barbara Tuchman’s “The Guns of August” in which she details the whole powder keg of interconnectedness that was just waiting to explode in everyone’s faces.
The Baby Boomers sat there and let everything go to hell while they were in charge. By the time the Millennials and Gen Xers got a turn at the wheel, we were already through the guardrail and in freefall. But the Baby Boomers forgot one crucial thing …
Without a tax base, they will discover that being old is really bad. A generational equivalent of the guy who worked off the books because he didn’t want to pay social security, and now, in old age, has nothing to retire on.
And I am dying to see what happens when all those 401(k)s start collapsing because, surprise, a continuous and increasing number of people are cashing out shares, but the younger people don’t have enough money to buy any of those shares. It’s called a feedback loop. I think it could be hilarious to watch as Robert and Jennifer discover their retirement doesn’t consist of whitewater rafting on the Colorado River and wine tastings on the Rhine because of what turns out, no matter what the exact fiscal terminology may be, to be a run on the banks.
I was born in 1965. What the hell am I?
> The Baby Boomers sat there and let everything go to hell while they were in charge.
We were well on our way to hell long before the boomers picked up the hand basket.
Lest we forget, it was the boomers who started protesting degradation of the environment, and actually made some progress. We bitched and moaned about capitalist pigs (AKA One Percenters) and had just about as much luck turning things around as has the Occupy movement. It was Reagan (not a boomer) who destroyed social security. Global warming has been a known issue since the early twentieth century, but it was the boomers who started trying to do something about it. It was the Greatest Generation that got us into ‘nam; and the boomers who got us out.
Baby Bush is a boomer, and he got us into a mess in the ME. Yet, while I was marching to protest those actions I noted a lot of grey pony tails in the bunch. I guess that not all boomers think alike, isn’t that strange? In any generation, you’ll find those who work for the people, and those who look out only for themselves.
And the millennials and X’ers have done what, exactly? Whined, bitched & moaned? Welcome to the club. Mark Zuckerberg is an X’er – according to you, he’s the devil incarnate. Should we judge all X’ers by his example?
In thirty years, it’ll be your kids who are bitching about the mess you left for them. I might still be around, it’ll be amusing to hear your reply.
Yes. We were well on our way to hell by the time the Boomers came along. I’m not going to dispute that. What I’m talking about is a complicated issue:
1. The rate of going-to-helledness is accelerating. We’re getting further into hell at a faster rate, and the rate of increase is itself increasing. And that has happened during the BB turn at the controls. Are ALL the Boomers to blame? Of course not. But their generation was the one in charge for the past 25-odd years.
2. Reagan gutted a lot. But the majority of Boomers were behind him? Their biggest issue? No more tax increases. They didn’t care about all the hippie-dippie-crunchy things: they weren’t interested in demanding universal health care, they weren’t interested in stopping the death squads in Nicaragua. Reagan and Meese and North wiped their asses on the Constitution and, heck, as long as the taxes stayed low, who cared? I got mine, buddy. What else could possibly matter?
3. This was hardly out of character though. Back when Vietnam was running full-tilt, a sliver of Boomerdom was opposed to the war because it was immoral. Most Boomers, however, simply didn’t the war to touch them. It wasn’t about civil rights or women’s rights or gay rights or ethics or anything else. It was about survival and fear. They went through marriage, graduate school, deferment after deferment, anything to not end up dying in a hellhole in Southeast Asia.
4. Do I blame them for that? Absolutely not. What I have a problem with is the ones who try to garb themselves in the robes of sublime compassion and enlightenment rather than admit they just didn’t want to die virgins at the age of 19 in a rice paddy in some country nobody had ever heard of.
5. They voted for Reagan because they didn’t want tax increases. And when the unions were gutted (remember when Ronnie fired the Air Traffic Controllers in 1981?) the Boomers impeached him. Oh wait, no, they didn’t. They voted him in for a second term.
6. As for the Gen Xers and the Millennials. Look at OWS. These people couldn’t pour piss out of a boot if you put the instructions on the heel. Why? Partly because the Boomers have had 25 years to ruin the education system. And again, in that, too, the situation was going to hell before the Boomers got to grade school. But the difference? The Boomers lived through Vietnam and Nixon. They were RIGHT THERE during one of the most corrupt periods in American history. Their fathers fought the Nazis and all the adults went through the McCarthy era. And when the Boomers had a chance to look at all the corruption and evil, the secret bombings, the paranoia, all of it, seeing Nixon impeached and Ford pardoning him, what did they do? Well whatever it was, it sure as hell was not demand more education about government and civil liberties in the curriculum.
7. So Gen X and Millennials end up, metaphorically, standing in front of a burning house. The fire’s been going for maybe 70 years. Ever since WWII wrapped up. For a long, long time, a garden hose turned on full probably would have been able to save most of the building. Now? The whole top floor’s a writeoff, there’s flames eating into the ground floor, too, and most of the roof is gone. At that point, you don’t blame someone who just got there for not fighting the fire. You all stand back and watch it burn itself out; there’s nothing else left to do.
I don’t blame all the Boomers. But the ones who let the fire spread and let it spread and let it spread? I blame them. All the way.
End of rant. Sorry for the length.
Interesting the way you twice stated that you didn’t blame all the boomers, but then started each sentence with “they” Shouldn’t it be “some of them” rather than “they”?
Assuming that’s just rhetoric, then I we agree. Let’s blame those that are to blame – the one percent. Otherwise we’re just pitting part of the 99% against the rest of the 99% while Monty Burns steeples his fingers and says, “excellent”
BTW – the X’ers were RIGHT THERE while the even-more-corrupt Bush admin was getting us into Afghanistan and Iraq, gutting our civil liberties, etc. Pot, meet kettle.
So, okay, the fire’s gotten bigger in spite of (some of) our best intentions. I’m getting burned as well – but it’s almost time for the handbasket handoff.
How do you propose to put out the fire, and what are you going to tell your kids when they point out that you didn’t?
hmm, upon review – this response came out harsher than I’d actually intended. My apologies for that.
Assume it’s delivered with a wry grin – *not* a condescending one -> commiseration, hoping for better in the future while realizing that humans of any generation don’t get off their fat asses until it’s too late.
CrazyH,
Yes, that’s sloppiness on my part when I write “they” but should write “some/most/exactly this many of them.”
It’s an important distinction you’re making, and I should pay more attention to that.
And yes, we’re in agreement on this. And you’re right about the Gen Xers being right there for Bush and Iraq. But by the time of Dubya, look what we’d had: Reagan, Bush I, Clinton, Bush II. 28 years of Republicans. What? Clinton was a Democrat?
Nah. Seriously. He wasn’t.
The point being, that by the time Gen X got to Bush II, of course they pretty much gave up. They had a massive series of rallies, culminating with the Washington Mall to try to stop the war. The media ignored it. The Gen Xers saw how big the fire was and gave up.
My only hope now is that once the fire’s done burning, we can all round up the arsonists.
A few baby boomers managed to screw all the rest, just as was the case with the so-called «greatest generation» before them and the present X-ers following them. That’s been the way of the world ever since the invention of agriculture rendered the accumulation of wealth possible ; it looks, to my cynical old eyes, as if it will continue until we manage to either change the climate so that our (rather uncivilised) civilisation collapse or take ourselves out in a thermonuclear conflagration, whichever comes first….
Here in Sweden, when we retire, we don’t pay less taxes, but more – something for you people on the wrong side of the Pond to consider ?…
Henri