FOR A FEW DOLLARS MORE – PART ONE

Blaming any one generation is absolutely wrong. I am not a boomer..but my parents are. I know my family has worked very hard to have what we have. Not all Americans are economists..but I sure wish now that I majored in Economics as I am sure many of us are waking up to a country that is honestly one big facade! I mean it absolutely blows my mind that we borrow over 40% of what this country spends. That’s insane! If I ran my household like that..I would be done by now!

The real fault lies in the leadership of this country..as humans are of herd instinct and we do tend to follow what precedes us as it is only natural. Many of us just happened to get caught up in the “blue light” specials our government likes to throw at us. After all we pay them well to guide us and lead this country in the right direction.

But..hell. Our leaders for the last 40 years especially has sold us out…and honestly has dug the deepest grave for us Americans. Whoever they are…they are seriously greedy and selfish…and yes will destroy the greatest country in the world.

Its important to not blame anyone in particular ..for as a country we really need to be strong and come together and help each other through some very hard times coming in the future. To write this is dividing and really it is the last thing our country needs.

Instead of pointing blame…write about something that may give Americans ideas on how to help our country. I see a lot of people complaining and crying about our situation..but what we need is innovation and creation and new ideas that can stimulate our economy. Like a new energy development that can change the way we use energy today. Just my two cents.

Colma raking a break from defending Jim’s nonsensical generational spew,

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(RE navigates the slippery slopes of boomerhood)

flush

It’s obvious you know nothing of generational theory — and that you don’t read comments which blow your idea of parenting to shreds. Like muck’s. And I could give you countless examples of kids who superficially hew to their parents’ example — but on their own, and probably influenced by peer pressure, are like Jekyll and Hyde personalities.

Of course, there are always exceptions to broad generalizations, but, by and large, youth follows its own cohort. It was always thus.

In an Egyptian tomb, there is an inscription loosely translated as: “The youth are going to the dogs.”

Also, godless and heathen is not an invariable coupling. One doesn’t have to bash the bible to have an ethical sense. And, in some of the colonial Puritan sects, good works and right thinking meant nothing: you might still be a heathen and God would have Chosen you as one of the Elect.

I encountered a variation of that many years ago — a young woman who asserted she was “born-again, saved … and it doesn’t matter what I do now.”

Maybe that’s why “”In My Father’s house are many dwelling places; if it were not so, I would have told you; for I go to prepare a place for you.” John 14: 2

So here’s the deal. Medicaid and Medicare. Boomers have been paying those taxes all our lives. Who has collected? Silents, mostly. Social Security? Yep, same deal. I am a mid boomer – ’55. Dropped out of college in ’74, went to work. For those of you who don;t remember, that was the first “oil shock.” Savings? Yeah, right. In fact, what Administrator may not understand is that for the second half boomers (’55 on to when ever you choose to start Xers), it’s basically been sort of sucky. The first half boomers had a great time. They got the free love. We got to be careful about AIDs. They got the last of the low mortgage rates as they started buying houses. We got the top and the back side of the housing boom collapse. And not just once – over and over. Basically we have paid a lot of taxes, a lot of interest on mortgages, and a lot of educational fees for our kids. Oh, yeah, and medical insurance for the kids, too. Now, as the first half of the boomers begin to retire, we get to put up with a good deal of bitter talk from the Xers, etc., about how good we had it. Yeah, right. We get to keep working. We get to keep paying taxes, And we’ve known damn well all our lives that we are probably never going to collect on all the “good deals” that the Silents and first half boomers voted for themselves. Look at military retirement. There are three separate plans now in effect. Silents and first half boomers got it good. Second half boomers and Xers got the short end of the stick. We’ve paid the taxes all our lives, and now we get told that “just wasn’t good enough.” “We should have saved more.” Yeah, right. When we had the disposable income before the kids came along, the economy was going to hell in a hand basket. Just because you are too young to remember 14% inflation, and 10% 30 year mortgages, doesn;t mean somebody didn’t have to deal with that. That was us. Then came the kids. Know why so many Xers were “latch key kids?” C’mon, think. Because, for the first time ever, mom and dad both had to work. Even if there wasn’t a divorce involved. Day care? Not cheap. But I suppose we should have saved more, right?

I suppose we should not be disappointed. Second half boomers always knew it was going to end badly. Now Ferris Bueller has just discovered that he is going to have to pay for the car he trashed. Oh, poor Ferris. Kinda sucks, doesn’t? Maybe, you are more like being a second half boomer than an Xer after all… Nice of you to invite us to joint you, but we already sort of did. At least, we paid for your share, through a lifetime of taxes and “good deals” that went away just as we got to the head of the line. Now you want to tar us with the first half boomers that DID get all the good deals. Yeah, sure. Go ahead – talk to the hand. Mine has callouses on it – does yours?

Old Soldier –

this is not the smallest violin playing for you, this is no violin

get over it and do what you need to do to prepare for the upcoming collapse, if voting for more entitlements for yourself is what you have to do – do it

uh oh tie game, admin’s gonna talk shit

Can’t resist putting in my two cents’ worth, even though there are so many comments. I’m a boomer, born in 1949, so I feel qualified to comment from the inside. I can tell you, I can’t remember any of my classmates coming up through grade school or high school EVER doing the right thing, except by accident. Then when the error was discovered, it was quickly rectified.

On to college–1967-1971. This ethically and morally challenged bunch I grew up with suddenly felt they were destined to show the way for humanity–especially for that bunch of cretins we called our parents–to the new age of enlightenment, hope, peace, and justice. Kind of chokes you up, doesn’t it?

Even at the time, I realized the radicals were a bunch of hypocrites. All the fair talk of justice and righteousness was hokum, pure unadulterated BS from a bunch who wouldn’t know integrity if it bit them in the ass.

Once they’d had their fun, and dissipated the force of their righteous indignation against the older generation for about a decade or so through long-running series such as MASH and All In The Family, they settled down to the real business of life–indulging themselves. Incredible how the dope-smoking maggots suddenly fit into three-piece suits. This was about the time that Land’s End got started, giving the boomers their new traditional look for their new direction.

From there, the pursuit of only the best took flight. It was fine cigars, wine-tasting parties for all the new discriminating class, country estates, luxury SUVs, and on, and on, and on. Everyone was a cognoscenti of some esoteric nicety. The idea of being happy with enough kind of got lost in the shuffle. But it all went bust just a few years ago.

Couldn’t have happened to a nicer bunch of guys and gals.

@ novista

Yeah, I forgot the GI generation. That’s my mom and dad. Dad did 27 years in the Coast Guard. Retired. He is now making more as a retiree than he did on active duty. I sort of figure my taxes have been paying part of his retirement all along.

@ printmemoney

I have never voted for an entitlement in my life. I own no stocks except livestock and rolling stock. My investment strategy is farm land, capital equipment to work that land, and a careful selection of heavy metal to protect that investment. So, yeah, I am getting ready for the collapse, and have been for a long time now.

I am not pissed at Xers at all. Why should I be? Many have worked for me over the years. They have generally been hard workers, who tended to leave work promptly when the time was up. For good reason, too. They had other things to do, and working for the man was a way to earn income – not a holy undertaking. Lots of boomers always have treated a career as something more than a job, Xers, not so much, So yeah, the Xers pretty much saw thru the manure early on. More power to ’em.

My point in general is that the screed that a specific generation (boomers writ large) is to blame for where we are at is a false assumption. Boomers didn’t create Peak Oil. Boomers didn’t tell Nixon to close the gold window. Boomers didn’t set up the Fed. Yeah, there were a lot of us born in the boomer window. Statistically, that meant more sociopaths around than has been the norm for the human race. Those same sociopaths encountered what we once called a “target rich environment.” Most of us were just trying to pay bills and remember what the hell actually happened in the 1970s. Working together with the Xers we fixed a lot of broken shit. After Vietnam, the services were flat busted. It wasn’t until the late boomers and Xers got in and fixed the system that we managed to get most missions accomplished on time and on target for a change.

The late GI generation leadership, and the early boomers managed to lie to each other so much that the entire system was screwed. Unit Status Reports were masterpieces of BS in the late 70s and first couple of years of the 80s. And then the drug tests came in, and the dopers left or were thrown out. And we “deglamorized” alcohol and took the beer machines out of the day rooms, and got down to business. It wasn’t just late boomers, it was mix of late boomers and Xers who fixed the shizzle. Has been all along.

It was late boomers and Xers working together who kept Y2K from being a real issue. And make no mistake, there was a LOT of work to do to fix the built-in shortcomings of legacy systems with insufficient memory. As it was – it worked. Not as if there were many “thanks” or “good job” accolades passed out by the senior boomers – never have been.

Now we have yet another big mess to fix. And it will be late boomers and Xers who fix it, with a lot of work by all our kids, too,. Between Peak Oil and the coming collapse of a global fiat currency ponzi scheme. we are likely to see “globalism” go down the tubes, much as it did with the advent of WWI. (Folks tend to forget that prior to WW I, the globe was pretty globalized, too – called the age of empires, you know.) WW I put the brakes on that one, and then the Depression did a real number on it we didn’t recover from for decades.

We are going to have to reinvigorate a new currency system, put trust back into commercial finance (in some fashion – I like Credit Unions personally, but they are not much good settling international letters of credit), restore the ideas of production versus consumption, thrift versus free spending, savings versus immediate outgo (savings being dependent on a sound money, of course, as without such, you are just peeing in to the wind). We need to transition to a new electrical based energy system, more solar capture based versus fossilized energy exploitative. And we need to keep feeding some 7 billion folks in the face of declining soil fertility and a massively unsure experiment in genetically modified organism (GMO) based commercial agriculture, on which the jury of time is still out. And then there is the probable ongoing end of this interglacial period, and the subsequent arrival of the next ice age to deal with as well…

At the same time, we need to have a genuine discourse about the nature of capitalism. Corporate capitalism. The modern corporation, in its current configuration as a multinational, is a gollum – a frankenstein monster that cannot be killed, that is massively bigger than any single human, that buys and sells governments, and wastes human lives and trashes human dignity. The vast majority of the shortsighted exploitation of the planet that has taken place since the end of WW II has been undertaken by corporations. President Eisenhower warned us all – but few listened.

We cannot hold this discourse in the face of name calling and the shame and blame game. It is not a generational issue, although some generations are going to face more work cleaning up the mess than others. We have had joint stock companies as part of the human experience for hundreds of years. They just keep getting bigger, and more powerful, and less humane. At the root of the problem, one always seems to find their tentacles. IT DOES NOT MATTER WHICH GENERATION IS RUNNING THEM.

I plead now with all those who are reading these posts: we must have a discourse about the nature and future of the limited liability joint stock corporation, as an idea. I believe history has shown that, in general, they are NOT a good for humanity.

I am no Commie. State socialism is just as bad, or maybe even worse. Small scale capitalism has proven to advance the lives of humans more than any other idea. It spelled the death knell of slavery, for instance. But large scale mega-corporations are another matter altogether.

I would hope that the obviously interested and concerned posters who populate the comments here would pause for a moment and think – in whose best interest is continuing the potty mouthed blame game? (Pay no attention to the folks behind the corporate curtains. I said, pay no attention to…) There is SO much work to be done to get beyond this imploding system and into the next. We have the tools to make the next system far more respectful of individual humans. But we are being manipulated away from the investigation and subsequent discourse required to come up with viable solutions. We must work together to come up with a new paradigm (yeah, the word has been overused, but it is the correct term here, so I use it without shame). We are going to have to come up with how the next world will be structured without the help of those who are running this one. They have vested interests in trying to keep the current system alive as long as possible. Most of the rest of us, however, don’t.

As I said earlier, most of us second half boomers always knew the system we worked in all our lives was going to end badly. That end is near. It will take all of us – boomer, Xer, Generation Next, etc., to come up with, and then implement, a viable solution. The Stuff has already hit the fan blades. DO we clean up this room, or, more likely, do we need to move to a new house? Playing the blame game will neither clean up the mess in our current house, nor make it easier to find a good place to move to. So, shall we get to work and leave the fellow in the tie dye tee shirt in the corner examining his navel?

Well Mr. Quinn, that is about the most insanely stupid post I’ve ever seen. Lets travel back to grade school for a minute and pick up a lesson you seem to have missed: judging people by their (1) skin color, (2) nationality, (3) hair color, (4) age, etc.. i.e. anything other than what they believe in, is called prejudice and is is a royal f-ing waste of everybody’s time! And while you are getting people to waste their time and resources fighting with each other, the real culprits are making off with even more of this once great country. Nice job asshole. We’ve got plenty of work to do without your hubristic flame war.