

Baby Boomers: We had it all, and still do.  - bishnu
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/we-had-it-all-and-still-do-its-worth-the-guilt/article2387987/

======
JonnieCache
There's a much more substantial article in esquire about this:

[http://www.esquire.com/print-this/young-people-in-the-
recess...](http://www.esquire.com/print-this/young-people-in-the-
recession-0412?page=all)

It was submitted recently but didn't make the front page.

If I think about this stuff too much, it makes me want to burn things.

It's going to come back to bite the boomers in twenty years when the youth
feel absolutely no obligation to support them. I and a lot of my peers are
planning to leave our home countries specifically so we don't have to spend a
single penny supporting the twilight indolence of that morally vacuous cohort
who _literally_ ruined the world for their benefit, after spending their
youths supposedly saving it, and their middle ages talking endlessly about how
great they are for having done so, all while they carved chunks out of their
children's future.

~~~
chimeracoder
> . I and a lot of my peers are planning to leave our home countries
> specifically so we don't have to spend a single penny supporting...

I have a friend who's planning on doing exactly that. If the US ever stopped
taxing income earned by US citizens living in foreign countries, the number of
expatriates flocking to Scandanavia, England, and the Netherlands would be
_astounding_. You'd get the best of both worlds.

The problem is that the people complaining when their benefits are cut are
often the same ones complaining that our tax rate is 'too high' compared to
the 92% (!) marginal tax rate during Eisenhower's administration. But of
course, that's around the time that the baby boomers were born, so they don't
remember that.

~~~
paulhauggis
"Scandanavia, England, and the Netherlands"

I guess if your idea of paying 60%+ taxes is "the best of both worlds", then
by all means do it.

"The problem is that the people complaining when their benefits are cut are
often the same ones complaining that our tax rate is 'too high' compared to
the 92% (!) marginal tax rate during Eisenhower's administration. But of
course, that's around the time that the baby boomers were born, so they don't
remember that."

Should we also talk about the state of women's rights or minorities during
that time? Oh yeah, and stop complaining.

92% marginal tax rate was wrong then..and it's wrong now.

~~~
leoedin
You're somehow suggesting that because policy on rights for women and
minorities was poor, the taxation system used at the time was also wrong.
Beyond attaching your claim that high tax is wrong to the universally accepted
claim that institutionalised racism and sexism is wrong, you give no real
justification for what you're saying.

Perhaps the smallest income disparity ever seen in modern society occurred
during that period of high taxation. The gradual erosion of high tax rates
(similar levels occurred in the UK around the same time) is almost certainly
due to pressure from the wealthy. Tax is a great leveller, providing an
underlying safety net for the most vulnerable or the most unfortunate in
society, and limiting the self awarded incomes of those at the tops of
companies.

While I wouldn't argue for taxation rates to be increased to those levels, I
really struggle to understand how the erosion of tax rates is in any way
beneficial to the vast majority of people. Assuming the target of society is
to have some level of equality across it's population, tax reduction is simply
wrong. The actions of politicians working to reduce tax are clearly driven by
the interests of those already wealthy enough to have a voice.

~~~
karamazov
The target of society is not equality, per se, but a high minimum standard of
living. pg has a great essay on this at <http://paulgraham.com/gap.html>. As a
quick summary: as technology increases and multiplies people's abilities to be
productive, we would expect the income gap to widen; someone 10x-50x as
productive as someone else should be compensated accordingly. Conversely, if
the marginal tax rate is 92% above 100k income, people will seek other forms
of compensation in their work - for example, shorter hours. No one is going to
put in 100 hour weeks to earn $300k a year, because after taxes that comes out
to an extra $27k; I'll relax at a 9-5 instead and just earn my government
mandated salary cap.

~~~
leoedin
That essay is really rather interesting and makes some great points. I do
think that it misses some important areas though. Given that it was written in
2004, I'll give Paul Graham the benefit of the doubt. Most of my points have
only really surfaced in the last few years.

1\. He states at one point that "It's absolute poverty you want to avoid, not
relative poverty.", which is certainly true to an extent, but not completely.
A recent BBC documentary looked at some of the poorest people in America.[1]
The thing that really struck me about that is that these people, in absolute
terms, are not poverty stricken. They're not short of shelter, food or water.
In relative terms though, they've been left behind. The modern american
society simply isn't designed for people living on their income level. They
live in motels without kitchens, so the option of cooking the basic staple
foods eaten by those on similar income levels elsewhere is unavailable to
them. They have to buy expensive packaged foods. The high cost of the society
they live in means that their disposable income, and their ability to climb
out of the economic hole that they're in, is almost certainly less than that
of people with their absolute income in a poorer society. Poverty has to be
considered in both relative and absolute terms. The people depicted in that
documentary have fewer options available to them than those in poor countries.
American health costs, education costs and rents are all designed for the
average American income level.

[1]:
[http://www.bbc.co.uk/panorama/hi/front_page/newsid_9694000/9...](http://www.bbc.co.uk/panorama/hi/front_page/newsid_9694000/9694094.stm)

2\. There are aspects of society that set their own value. I know it's popular
to complain about bankers right now, but they're probably the best example of
this. Banking a necessary evil to allow us to deal with the vast, money based
economy we've created. While almost every other industry operates by trading
goods or non-monetary services for money (and so only sees money that's in
some way related to their business expenses), banking sees _all_ the money. A
"normal" business can increase profits by maintaining or increasing income and
reducing expenses (eg outsourcing, manufacturing in China, reducing material
costs). Banks, by virtue of their operation, handle incredible amounts of
money. They're in a unique situation that allows them to set the value of the
service they provide. Not surprisingly, that service value is set considerably
higher than perhaps it truly is.

It's obviously hard to place a value on the services provided by banks. In his
essay, Paul Graham talks about wealth creation, giving a farmer as an example.
The banking (and financial trading system) is not primarily a wealth creator.
It's a system for moving that created wealth around. Banking can enable wealth
creation with funding, but the system we have today has developed to reward
activities with high returns over short periods. What I'd argue as true human
wealth creation - manufacturing and valuable service provision - doesn't
provide the returns that the banking system was looking for. The house of
cards built up by high frequency trading, derivatives, futures and other
hugely abstracted banking and trading concepts is far removed from this wealth
creation.

Society rewards bankers with large amounts of money. Paul Graham argues that
Steve Jobs increases material wealth, and so his monetary wealth in return was
deserved. That's almost certainly true, but banking isn't a case of the
average person going out and buying an iPad because it increases their
material wealth. Bankers are rewarded richly because they've constructed a
system over the last hundred years which takes large rewards for itself. There
is very little true wealth produced by the system.

That essay was however written during the good times. In 2004 none of us were
aware of just what a damaged financial system our economies are based on. In
2004 the families featured in that BBC documentary had a house with a hot tub.
While I agree that there needs to be an incentive for productive working,
there also needs to be a safety net. In our technology driven society, people
shouldn't be struggling hard just to stay under a roof and feed their
children. History has shown that the rich are the ones who have a voice, and
so craft the system to benefit them.

------
goodcanadian
There seems to be a lack of intelligent conversation on this subject, but this
article (despite not being very substantial) hit upon one of my pet peeves, so
I'll give it a go.

Western society, or at least North American society, has long been set up to
the benefit of the boomer generation. That is not terribly surprising as they
make up the largest single group. I don't blame them individually or
collectively. It is, after all, my parents generation. The real issue, to my
mind, is that they still occupy the top positions they they have been
occupying since their 20s and 30s. This point of view may not get much
sympathy on a forum dedicated to entrepreneurial pursuit, but I feel I have
been seriously disadvantaged in my career as there is still a glut of boomers
occupying the middle and upper rungs. I have a good job, but it is a limited
term position, and I am still at the bottom of the totem pole. I am in my 30s,
but I am still considered and treated like a "young person." When is it my
turn?

This is, of course, part of the reason that I lurk on HN, and that I consider
launching a start-up almost on a daily basis.

~~~
WalterBright
I find it strange to reconcile this position with the other oft-repeated
position that people over 50 cannot get hired.

~~~
mojowo11
At the moment, people under 50 can't get hired either.

------
danielschonfeld
Not sure if this was sarcastic or not, but the words are true. Boomers had it
and continue to. Whats left for the younger generation is a world of fear and
terror, where standing outside of the yellow marked line can and most likely
will castrate you.

~~~
guard-of-terra
Where did you notice any sarcasm? The numbers and facts mostly speak for
themselves.

------
ww520
Simple fix in two steps. 1. Delink entitlement with inflation. 2. Inflate
away.

Non-working Boomers with fixed incomes will lose due to inflation. Working
late comers will have their earning raised with inflation.

~~~
trevelyan
What a cruel and cynical recommendation! Who cares if Canadian health care
costs spike for a number of years as the population gets older and baby
boomers require treatment. This the point of having health care.

The source of the bitterness many feel towards the baby boomer generation is
the perception (rightly or wrongly) that the group as a whole advocates
politically hypocritical policies -- not because anyone sane wishes ill of the
weak or poor or infirm.

~~~
ww520
Who had stopped the Boomers when they looted the later generations with their
oversized entitlement? The later generations are just trying to get things
back to order. There ain't no free lunch.

~~~
trevelyan
Looted? If you want to argue from a position of fiscal soundness you will have
to do much better than suggest Canada adopt the US approach to health care,
which provides less coverage at significantly higher rates. Or advocate the
intentional debasement of a currency as measure of fiscal sanity. Your
proposal leaves the poor much worse off and the rich paying considerably more
for health care. The difference in costs buys a lot of lunch.

------
zzimbler
I hope the baby boomers realize that the 20 somethings out there don't give a
damn about their entitlements and we'll pick up and move to Africa if we have
to because all we need is a solid internet connection.

------
wheaties
This kind of thing will continue in any government system wherein the current
body can borrow large sums of money now to pay for perk's now with little to
no consequences now. Eventually someone pays the price but the bet is that
someone will be around when the current beneficiary isn't.

~~~
hemancuso
That might be a problem for the NEXT generation, but paying back government
debt isn't what is driving the numbers in these articles.

------
nitrogen
_(Compared to the protest movement of the Sixties, the Occupy movement is a
toothless tiger.)_

Maybe that's because the Occupy protesters have seen the videos of what
happened in more extreme cases to the 60s protesters (not to mention advances
in crowd control techniques, like microwave guns, pepper spray, and using LRAD
at close range).

------
LVB
It will be fun getting entitlement changes through with this age distribution:

[http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/info-
CONGRE...](http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/info-
CONGRESS_AGES_1009.html)

------
rwmj
There's a good book about this:

[http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Pinch-Boomers-Childrens-
Future/d...](http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Pinch-Boomers-Childrens-
Future/dp/1848872313)

... by a serving UK cabinet minister (so I guess it didn't do a lot of good).

------
jes5199
Did she forget Vietnam?

------
guard-of-terra
Speaking from outside North America: We're hoarding popcorn right now to see
if you can figure out this one.

(however I've heard some west europe countries are sharing the milder form of
the same disease)

~~~
Locke1689
It seems as though many non-North American countries have much in common with
Canada, especially in health care. Why do you think that this article only
applies to North America?

~~~
guard-of-terra
Well, at the moment it doesn't seem to apply to where I live (Russia) - the
set of problems is just so different. Not that there are many good things
going on here, but anyway:

We have an unique, first time in a few centuries, moment when we can sit in
the back row and enjoy the entertainment.

------
schraeds
You can have the entitlements, we have a chance to change the world. For all
the hippy protests, and idealism, and futurism, that generation did SQUAT.

~~~
karamazov
The problem is how much it'll cost us to pay for those entitlements.

------
wavephorm
The way the baby boomer generation has raped our society of wealth by piling
on debt to be paid by future generations is an abomination. To me, it is
concrete proof that democracy doesn't work. How is it possible make things
fair in a popularity contest when you're outnumbered?

I honestly don't know why everyone under the age of 30 isn't rioting and
burning down the system right now. They got dealt a shit hand.

