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Sunday, April 10, 2011

Setting the stage for generational warfare
Posted by Jill | 5:32 PM
I can't even begin to tell you how many arguments I've had with people who are my FRIENDS about how they think everyone born during the post-WWII baby boom is responsible for everything that's wrong in the world, and how we're clogging up the workforce and hogging all the good jobs and we didn't have to deal with AIDS and we had it so good and left them nothing and why don't we just die already.

And these are people who are FRIENDS.

I have a boss in her 40's. All of my colleagues in my department at work are significantly younger than I am. The next youngest one is 51.

Imagine what my life at work is going to look like when this becomes reality:
House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) admitted Sunday that he didn't expect Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare to be around when he retires.

"What we [House Republicans] have said is this: We'll protect today's seniors and those nearing retirement, but for the rest of us, all of us, who are 54 and younger, I know the programs are not going to be there for me when I retire," Cantor told Fox News' Chris Wallace.

"They can't," he added.


Cantor is 48. No wonder he takes so much money from the securities, real estate, and insurance industries. He's lining his own pockets for when he's successful in dismantling Social Security. Oh, and by the way, HE gets a government pension and taxpayer-funded health insurance FOR THE RESET OF HIS LIFE after he leaves office.

You think everyone hates baby boomers now? Just wait.

This is how Republicans are scapegoating public sector workers now:





Wait till you see what they say about those of us who manage to slip in under the wire. Wait till you see what they DO to those of us who manage to slip in under the wire. Rest assured, if you are in your mid-fifties or early sixties and you think you have nothing to worry about, guess again. The public sector workers who are now being scapegoated for the misdeeds of bad state governments making bad investments of pension fund money with sleazy bankers and hedge fund managers are the canary in the coal mine for tomorrow's Social Security recipients.

If you were making plans for your elderly years that included Social Security, you'd better start making other plans. Because you might get your check for a couple of years, but there are going to be a lot of angry younger people coming after you; some of them your own kids.

And the bankers are going to be grabbing the Orville Redenbacher and laughing as we tear each other apart.

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3 Comments:
Blogger M. Bouffant said...
Boy, no crap.

That "blame the Boomers for everything" deal has been going on w/ all those young bastards milling about on my lawn for some time, but that was just cultivation; now the dividers are ready to harvest their crop.

(I type that as a closer-to-60-than-50 wretch completely dependent on SSI/disability & Section 8 housing. We are screwed.)
4/10/11, 7:20 PM  
Anonymous Charlie O said...
I'm 51. I've been paying social security taxes since I was 15. They have already moved the carrot. If they take it from me completely, Mr. Cantor will less happy with my alternative retirement program. My .357 will get me through my golden years off the back of liquor stores, WaWas and 7-11.
4/12/11, 8:42 AM  
Blogger Pangolin said...
Seriously, who the fuck gets to make plans anymore? I've met people who've had three pensions raided by Wall Street fat cats and still they can't connect the dots.

Fully 20 percent of working-age adults have no full time work, no savings, no assets, no health care and no retirement. There are people counted as "employed" in the official statistics because they managed to scrape together 40 hours of work a month.

I would go back to school and get retrained except my student loans are non-dischargable and I can't pay them because I'm medically bankrupt. I can't get shit for health care because, face it, the U.S. health care "system" is a joke.

Your retirement is going to be the same plan they offered in Soylent Green, or Children of Men, a suicide booth or a riot cops gun.
4/17/11, 8:12 PM  
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