Centerfield: Why Didn't Baby-Boomer Leadership Deal With Their Generation's Benefit Deficits?

July 03, 2009

Why Didn't Baby-Boomer Leadership Deal With Their Generation's Benefit Deficits?

Isn't it their responsibility? But it's taken a post-Boomer President to get serious about looking at these things atall seriously.

Clinton only talked the talk, and didn't walk the walk atall. I'm not seeing how Hillary-care would've cut costs. Bush II only made things worse. His Part D, of course, was severely underfunded. And we're all fortunate that his SS reform failed, because it would've also made things WORSE, not better; the privatization option was so stupidly done it would've needed extra money on the table(!).

Thanks for nothing!

Posted by Jon Kay at July 3, 2009 02:09 AM

Comments

I suspect that, as a political matter, it would have taken some of our generation's leadership seeing the problem back in the 1970s, or at least the early 1980s. Because at that point we would have been facing years of paying into the system still, and so have been easier to persuade that it needed changing. Today, as we are looking to retire very shortly, all we are looking at is taking money out -- and so have no incentive to change the benefits to something more sane. But that would have required, you know, actual leadership: telling people things that they needed to hear, rather than what they wanted to hear.

As it is, all too many of my peers went cheerfully along thru their working lives believing that they would get everything promised . . . and (not) saving for retirement accordingly. Which contributed to the nation's abysmal savings rate for the past couple of decades, and thus to the current unwillingness to face the reality before us.

Myself, I figured out in the early 1960s (when I first drew a pay check as a teenager) that I would never see a dime out of Social Security. Which may have been overly pessimistic, but at least made me save as I went along. And also got me regarded as something of a fool by my peers, who were spending like there was no tomorrow. But at least now, I can honestly sympathize with those of you who are facing a financial disaster, and a bulge of voters whose self-interest drives them to keep voting every more unaffordable retirement/Social Security/Medicare benefits. Sorry guys, but you really are screwed on this one.

Posted by: wj at July 3, 2009 11:28 AM

Thanks for that, wj!

Posted by: Jon Kay at July 4, 2009 01:26 AM

Well, it may be some small consolation for those of you who come after that a lot of us baby boomers are going to be making a shocking discovery. That the only retirement option that really exists for those who did not bother to save over their careers is . . . abject poverty. Otherwise, they get to keep working for years (decades, like as not) longer than they every intended to. No to maintain their opulent lifestyle, but just to pay the interest on the debts (personal, as well as public) that they ran up.

Posted by: wj at July 4, 2009 02:11 AM

People give lip service to deficit reduction as long as they don't have to sacrifice for it. No politician is going to do the things necessary to cut the deficit because the populace doesn't want it. We have seen a whole generation where the only solution to the budget is to cut taxes regardless of the situation. Conservatives talk about reducing spending but that's a chimera; when it gets down to it, they only want to cut spending for things that help people that aren't their constituencies.

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