I can't help but see the baby boomer generation as a leech on society.

Society has leeched off of me. By the time I retire, I'll get back about 40% of hat I put into SS. Had I been able to invest it myself, I would have gotten back several times that.

How you see that as me being a leech is beyond me. Just sounds like unfound whining to me.

Typical thread from generation whine, the "it's all about me, my cell phone, my boat, my car, my playstation, my ipad, and did I say, me, me, poor victimized me?" generation.

#5 -- good going. With a great attitude like that, you'll have no problems. Good luck with school.

. I won't even mention the many articles you post attacking the younger generations, blaing them for almost everything.

I thought my generation was supposed to have learned from our hippie parents that there is more to life than taxable income.

I learned that too from my non-hippie parents. I've had a pretty good life even though I can't say I really had money to speak of until the last ten years or so. I didn't let the fact I had be careful with what I had keep me from having satisfactory life.

The next generation is left with comments 13 and 14.

You poor victimized soul -- take it to oprah. She'll solve all your problems you poor thing.

The generation following the Babyboomers will be the first generation in America to be worse off than their parents. Good job Boomers!

Another victim!

So let me get this straight: You have it worse off than your parents and you have nohing to do with it. Will the victimization ever cease? LOL

Generation whine, get off your cell phone, ipads, play stations long enough to do something positive. Quit getting up to your ears in debt on a house, car, big screen TVs, RVs and four wheelers and boat you can't afford. You might find life a little easier, crybabies. Y'all have cast your lot with your reckless spending and unreal priorites. It's your fault -- not someone elses. now man up and deal with it before it's too late. Blaming someone else for your self-induced problems won't help a bit.

So you're A-OK with a sour grapes attitude that means the next generation will have it worse?

Who says they'll have it worse? And if they do, who says it's not their own fault?

So, jpw, do you see yourself as another helpless victim in the hands of the evil baby boomers?

According to them, a newbie college graduate is somehow better than a HS grad with 4 years of experience. *That* is the problem that needs to be addressed.

At least in the telecom business, experience is generally preferred over education. I worked for MCI and Sprint for a total of 20 years and that has alwys been the case. I understand that not all industries are the same.

I think I misunderstand your complaint, though. I would think you,j having invested a lot of time and money for a sheepskin, would see the opposite as a problem, i.e. the experienced HS grad getting the preferential treatment instead of the college grad.

Have you been sleeping through all the budget BS the past several months?

No.

My question still stands, unless you have some crystal ball that foretells of it going on for 35 more years.

Boomers are expecting to have their life maintained so far as government spending is concerned

Well, seeing as to how they've been giving the government part of their paychecks their entire working lives for them to do that, I think it's a reasonable expectation to get it back as promised. That we do have that expectation makes us evil? Get real. If it makes you feel better, I'll get back about 40% of what I put in if I die when actuarial tables predict I will. I could have had hundreds of thousands more if I just put it into money market accounts all that while.

But it will be entirely of my own making despite the greed and self-centeredness of boomers.

So you think that the baby boomers expecting to get back at least part of what they put into SS for 50 years is greedy and self centered?

[...] They should forfeit that money to pay off all the upside down mortgages and big screen TVs that generation whine bought.

SS/medicare taxes aren't squirreled away for your use when you reach the right age.

hmm. Then I wonder why all retirees who paid into it are getting it? I wonder why SS was enacted under that premise? [...]

Again, please don't stereotype.

I'll try to maintain better aim.

We gave young Americans Bill Clinton to show them how to make the economy work...

Oh, please, corky. Get real. Clinton was at the right place at the right time -- the beginning of the dot com boom. Clinton had nothing to do with the booming economy at the time. He just had to sit back and let it happen. Blind partisanship sure muddles a person's thinking as you just proved.

BTW, the dot com boom was brought about by telecom deregulation which spurred telecommunications competition after the breakup of AT&T's monopoly which brought about a boom in telecommunications technologies (such as Sprint bringing the country's first coast to coast fiber network, ATM (asynchronous transfer mode) SONET (self healing networks) Frame Relay and other technologies which made dirt cheap, fast, and plentiful data networks possible. ANd guess who was president and responsible for telecom deregulation which led to this? (I'll let you look it up, corky)

Clinton had nothing to do with the booming dot com economy during his tenure, corky. Get real.

The misconception that SS is a retirement plan has got to stop if it's ever to be fixed.

You misunderstood my point. I agree that SS is not supposed to be a retirement plan, nor do I treat it as such. My point was being made to the person in post #2 who is calling baby boomers leeches on society. I was pointing out that this "leech" (me) will only see 40% of what I gave to social (emphasis on that word, it's the same Latin root as "society") security. Leech implies taking more than one is giving, not vice versa

...greatest multi-generational theft in history ...

How do you consider it theft?

Besides, did the baby boomers ask to be born? Is it their fault that everyone who came back from the war wanted to settle down, marry, and have babies?

If a silly blame game must be played, blame the previous generation for giving birth to the baby boomers. The baby boomers had no choice in the matter.

THIS is the mantra. Take no responsibility. Blame everyone else. Anyone who points out the broken logic is a heretic. Silence them.

My point exactly mr. "baby boomers are leeches".

Thank you.

When your generation is willing to stop mortgaging their present to the max, their future will immediately begin to look much brighter. Give up the McMansion. Give up the new cars. Give up the big screen TV, ipads, and Galaxy S iii. Learn to cook economically and stop eating out so often. Forego the designer clothes. We boomers somehow managed to reach our current ages without them. We knew how to live within our means and did. That generation whine doesn't isn't our fault. Perhaps you should be taking lessons instead of assigning blame.

Is this meant as a joke?

No.

I get out. I see the world. I see relatives and friends my age whose kids are up to their eyeballs in debt just so they can have the latest toy. I didn't grow up like that and neither did most anyone I know. However now, people see nothing wrong with it. They live with their parents until they are 25 or older because they feel entitled to things they can't afford if they lived on their own.

Interesting article:

LOL what a joke.

Actually, it's not.

Yup, because we all know it's just bitterness that the boomers dared to be born.

No, I think it's more of a lashing out from generation whine. By the age of 30 or so, they're so deep in debt from poor spending decisions, and upside down in a house they should have known better than to buy, and they aren't honest enough to blame themselves for these problems. So they lash out at the baby boomers who are in a better financial situation than they are. That's partially because of their age, of course, but it's also because of better choices made during life.

Hint goatman, we're both making the same error in using our personal example as representative of our generation while generalizing the other.

I speak generally of course because I assume the reader is smart enough to understand there are always exceptions. I take neither side's postings as intending to be absolutes. I'm smart enough to know there are exceptions to the generalities spoken

btw, how old are you, jpw?

You're one of the smart ones -- maybe smarter than me on money. It wasn't until I was 32 that I made the smart decision to never take a loan out for something I wanted, even a car. I've saved and paid cash for everything I ever bought since then, mortgages excluded, of course, though I do outright own one of my two houses.

Then why the blindness to the boomer's actions as laid out in Jaque's posts?

Because I don't see that as an issue to their current problems. It might be in 30 years, but today it's not. Yes, I know the article is talking about the future. So if the current generation sees this coming, isn't it more prudent to scale back their lifestyle and put away more money than to whine about point fingers as to who is to blame to what will (they see it as a given) happen to them?

If I happen to be around in 30 years (very unlikely) and the dire predictions come true, I'd love to be able to pull out this thread and say, "You saw it coming. Why didn't you plan instead of going balls deep in debt?"

It's a trite fable, but nonetheless, the story of the ant and the grasshopper come to mind.

but my generation is suffering. Boomers deserve a lot of blame for this - you can't escape that

How are boomers to blame for the current generation's problems? What have they done any differently to them than has happened to themselves?

We have been screwed by the government and institutions that they have promoted - wall street, banking, medical insurance.

I would say boomers are more screwed. They depend on medical insurance more. The should be cashing in on investments they made over the decades so they can retire, but they can't because of wall street and banking institutions. How have they effected you, a person who has (presumably) 35 more years to nurture your investments? Serious question.

your worthless generation would be crying in the street without those programs.

As would the also worthless people of all ages who depend on SS.

Still I'm waiting for you to tell me how the banks, insurance companies, and wall street has done more damage to generation whine, (barely into their savings for retirement years), than they have done to the boomers, who have been counting on them for decades and have run out of time.

Our government is so saddled with debt that it can no longer provide basic services now - much less provide for the SS/Medicare that they are promising us 30 years from now.

ANd we are back to my original premise -- how is it thirty year olds are more dependent on these services than baby boomers?

Jacque -- you are avoiding the question: How is your generation worse off than mine because of wall street, the bankers, and insurance companies. You've seen their evil and you are lucky enough to have a few decades ahead of you to compensate with appropriate investments. (Gee, I wish 401ks with matching employer contributions were around when I entered the work force. You have it lucky!) The Boomers have no time left to invest and were blindsided -- just at the time they needed these institutions the most.

So tell me how you are worse off, retirement wise, please

You are asking us to pay into these programs for another 30 years when we all know we will never collect benefits from them.

I feel the same way, but iT was pointed out upthread that this was not the intention of SS.

gree - but given the boomers were the first generation that failed to actually save money

???

WTF are you talking about? Can you steer me towards a resource that explains this?

Oh, and again, thanks for AIDS.

Your argument is floundering badly.

Since you fail to address my post about the bankers, etc. doing more harm to the boomers than the whiners (since we were blindsided with no time left, unlike you), I'll assume you concede that point.

Oh, and again, thanks for AIDS.

And I suppose it's those evil boomer's fault that generation whine can't practice safe sex or monogamy.

Your dollar will buy a lot more than my dollar, because my dollar was devalued to pay for the failures of wall street, the bankers and insurance companies.

hmmm. So you have advanced knowledge of financial pitfalls, unlike the boomers and you'll be able to plan accordingly. Sounds like you've got it better. We didn't know (no one did) of the impending doom that struck the economy about the time we started retiring.

Lucky you.

Your generation enabled the corruption in wall street to reach the point that wall street is no longer a viable means of investing. It was a means of investing for 90 years - now, it has lost credibility.

See post 122

Generational greed and stupidity is not a good combination

BINGO! Better quit spending so much and get on a savings plan that does well considering today's financial realities, generation whine!

It's about the hole dug underneath us when we were most financially vulnerable.

I'm not ignoring the premise of the article. I agree with it. What I disagree on is that this issue is unique to the current generation. This happened to ALL of us at the same time.

The difference? The current has 35 years to come up with plan B. The boomers were blindsided at retirement time and are fucked.

We were all hurt by it, but some have time left, some don't. So to see one generation play the "woe is me" card as if boomers weren't hurt, too, just reeks of petulant whining.

clearly the boomers don't appreciate our sacrifice on their behalf.

"Our, us, we, me . . ."

That article I linked to was spot on. LOL

No comment on your generations being completely unprepared financially for retirement?

What can we do? I was one of the ones blindsided (Yes, shocker -- I was as affected by the bankers as you, you, you, it's NOT all about you. But I don't have as much time to make up for it as you generation whine) I would otherwise had had it very good. I made some investments on my own when the market bottomed out a few years ago that have paid off handsomely to make up for the ones in my 401k that took a dive. DOes that count as being prepared?

The reality is that your generation was completely unprepared for retirement even without the financial collapse. After the collapse, it fell to $121K....this is hole your generation dug over a lifetime of poor choices.

Got it. They'll suffer for it.

I'm sure the "it's all about me" generation whine will do much better. Somehow they'll overcome their proven greed and narcisism to have everything NOW and make up for it when they are old because they are so smart.

GOod for you.

We aren't that smart...but we're smart enough to recognize "easy mode" when we see it.

Carpe diem

We aren't that smart...but we're smart enough to recognize "easy mode" when we see it.

That explains generation whine mooching off of their parents and living at home until they are 28

I'd love to seize a 15k mortgage and 20 dollar credit hours in college. Where can I do that?

15k in what year's dollars?

Get 4 years of college for free by being smart and getting a scholarship or join the service and get it for free, regardless of your smarts. Also, there are certain grants that can be applied for. Check google, you may find an answer that meets your needs.

That's Gen Y. I know, they're all the same parasites to you, amirite?

Which one is gen y? '85 - '05?

No, not all of them are parasites. Don't be absurd. (if that's possible)

But the situations aren't comparable.

As I cited. The boomers got hit when they were ready to retire. IOW, no time to replan or reinvest or regroup. Your generation at least has a few decades to recover.

In my eyes, being blindsided at the last minute is worse. Of course I'm biased given my age and losses. But the point remains that the featured article focuses on one generation as if they were the only ones hurt, which is far, far from the truth. And the resulting comments (not necessarily yours) pretend otherwise and that an entire generation is to blame for ills to befall them 30-40 years from now.

That's absurd

An analogy:

A train engineer sees a car stalled on the road well in advance of being able to stop the train. Yet he keeps claiming it's the car driver's fault he crashed even though he made no effort to avoid tha collision.

Boomers leveraged their mortgages by a factor of ten

I do not believe this to be true. Can you provide a link to verify this?

Or are you resorting to hyperbole because that's all you can muster?

I'm out. Have a good evening.

You too. Don't have dessert. The compounded interest on the invested amount could be worth $50 later.

(it's a joke)

Also, there's no way to move the car.

Oh well. Do nothing and sit and whine about it for 35 years and die in poverty. I don't care. I'll be 35 years dead myself.

but it has nothing to do with the government handing my money to you.

You mean the government handing a fraction of my own money back to me after having held it for over 35 years.

Glad I was able to correct you on this point. That you didn't know this explains a lot of your irrational angst. But now you know and you can get over it and move on.