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War Against Youth?

Somehow a thread in the Asylum has 21 posts in it and I don't disagree with any of them. Weird.
 
It's not just college, our whole culture promotes greed and self-interest over all else. You deserve the best.
 
bobknightfan said:
I agree wholeheartedly that my generation has screwed up everything. This is the first time since Lord knows when....and probably ever... that the next generation cannot reasonably expect a better standard of living than the last one.

One of the biggest areas we have screwed up is continuing the ridiculous defense spending. When Reagan bankrupted the Soviet Union by 1989, one of the benefits of our own radically increased defense spending in the 1980s was supposed to be this great "peace dividend" whereby we could significantly lower our own defense spending, once the Soviet Union was no longer a threat. Sounded great on paper at the time. However, the military-industrial complex had other ideas. They kept coming up with new, different bogeymen to justify even greater defense expenditures. Our defense budget should have at least been cut in half after 1989....at least. I wonder what the effect would be on our budget deficit today if the DOD budget had been cut in half for the last 23 years....with the savings there plus interest on the debt savings, as well as the off-budget expenditures for the completely unnecessary Iraq War? That would be a hell of a lot of money saved over 23 years.
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We spend something like 20% of the Federal budget on defense spending. In 1970 it was 60%. And that 20% number came from a few years ago when we were still in 2 wars.

We spend slightly more on SS than on defense. And we spend significantly more on healthcare than on defense. Combined those two items approach 50% of all Federal spending. And that percentage is expected to continue to grow significantly - all with your generation continuing to vote for no reform.

On a side note, Obama's latest budget conveniently doesn't even address the topic of entitlement reform. Ryan at least has the guts to address it. And now there is a small bi-partisan movement to address the budget as well. Their proposal follows Simpson-Bowles and raises revenues and deals with entitlement reform. It approaches Ryan's budget in terms of slicing into the deficit. And both of those plans leave the President's lame effort in the dust in that regard - the WSJ had a good chart on this yesterday. The single biggest threat to those who aren't baby boomers is our debt. And of all the politicians in Washington, Obama seems to be the one with the least will to tackle the issue.
 
ProfessorDeac said:
I do agree with the article's premise, but there are other factors contributing to this problem. One that came to my mind is how our expected standard of life has gotten more expensive as compared with previous generations.

I'm trying to imagine how the first ten years after high school were different for baby boomers. First college (and more of us go to college). For us, one of the reasons college is so expensive is that it provides (and we expect it to provide) what I consider an unreasonably high standard of living for 18-22 year-olds who are supposed to be studying. Too many fairs, clubs, university-sponsored parties, too much fancy food, fancy living arrangements, fancy grounds-keeping, and yes, too much money spent on athletics. I recognize this is how universities compete with each other, but it's gotten out of hand. Compare with the baby boomers' college experience: typically one dining option (cheap cafeteria food), cheaper housing, fewer costly frills (like the Barn :rulz:), etc. And as the article says, they learned more. Same problems apply to grad school. (Obviously, this is not the only reason school is too expensive; they are definitely overcharging.)

After college, our expectations remain too high. It seems to me that, in addition to saddling us with monstrous debt, the pampered college experience also makes us accustomed to a quality of life that we shouldn't be purchasing in our twenties. I'm 26, and I expect to have cable TV, central air, high speed internet, healthy food, quality medical insurance, a car to get to work, the ability to save money to buy a house, the ability to take trips and stay in hotels, etc. I'm resisting a smart phone, but I'm close to expecting that as well. Whereas at 26, baby boomers certainly didn't spend as much on themselves. They might not have had central air, cable TV, stayed in hotels, may have ridden the bus, etc. I mean, I got married last year, and for our first place we got a nice, two-bedroom apartment. Our grandparents' first places were (1) taking the upstairs in an uncle's house and (2) company housing on a coal mine. Perhaps I heed the BKFs of the world a little too much, but I do feel that we're a somewhat pampered generation.

I'm definitely not trying to absolve the people who are screwing our generation. There's plenty of money for everyone to have a good, 21st Century lifestyle without bankrupting ourselves or the government, and old people making that impossible by being greedy. But I think we should recognize that we live expensive lives, without which we'd have a good bit more money left over.
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I find what you write in terms of expectations hard to believe. I'm in my early 40's. Apparently a lot has changed in the last 15-20 years.
 
This is the stat that annoys me the most:

"The federal government spends $480 billion on Medicare and $68 billion on education." Guess what - you fuckers are old and are going to die, just deal with it and let everyone else have a chance. Bow out gracefully and don't saddle everyone else with the costs of trying to repair your body that you loaded up with prescription drugs, illegal drugs, booze, nicotine, fast food, and lethargy for decades. As you have lost/rejected the religion of generations past, you developed a fear of your own mortality that is suffocating the livelihood of your children.

But at least we all know that Obamacare will bring this statistical disparity back in line and not make it worse, amirite?
 
exactly, there's no reason my 87 yr old grandmother should pay ZERO DOLLARS for like 10 different medications each month

how the fuck did we get to that???
 
bobknightfan said:
We might possibly agree on more things than you would think. I hope I have made it clear that I think the cost of healthcare is outragious and needs to be reigned in....though we might disagree on how to do that. I am in favor of reforming entitlements as well. We have made promises that we cannot keep in perpetuity. However, none of this absolves us for our wasteful military spending. Yes, military spending is a smaller percentage of the budget than it was 40 years ago....but there are demographic reasons for that....and considering the lack of any worldwide threat today like we had with the Soviet Union during the "Cold War"....the percentage of the budget spent on the military should be far, far less than 20% today. And another one of the biggest screwups that has been made regarding the budget debt for the future took place in the last decade, under the Bush Administration, when it foolishly (and unnecessarily) slashed what were already low tax rates, while drastically increasing spending at the same time.
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Yes, we need to cut lots of stuff, including defense.
 
Great article and great responses so far on this thread.

For me the spiraling higher education costs are just ridiculous. A quarter million dollars for an education at a private school? Are you kidding me?

Am I far off in thinking that community colleges are going to be an explosive growth industry in the next decade? As our workforce retools for the IT age, why would they waste 6 figures getting an education from some name brand diploma mill when they can be educated on the cheap and learn the very toolset they need to function in the modern job market?
 
The article is spot on. I can't believe this figure, well I can but it is ridiculous.
"Only 58 percent of Boomers have more than $25,000 put aside for retirement, so the rest will either starve or the government will have to pay for them."

Its ridiculous to call the younger generation entitled and spoiled when from that figure it is pretty clear that the boomer generation might have started late but finished strong in the area of overspending and not saving. Making the cut off 25,000 dollars is random but that means if you worked for 40 years, say from 22-62, you were able to save less than 625 dollars a year, that is saving 52 dollars a month, or simply put $1.71 a day. #BOOMERSOUT
 
bobknightfan said:
We might possibly agree on more things than you would think. I hope I have made it clear that I think the cost of healthcare is outragious and needs to be reigned in....though we might disagree on how to do that. I am in favor of reforming entitlements as well. We have made promises that we cannot keep in perpetuity. However, none of this absolves us for our wasteful military spending. Yes, military spending is a smaller percentage of the budget than it was 40 years ago....but there are demographic reasons for that....and considering the lack of any worldwide threat today like we had with the Soviet Union during the "Cold War"....the percentage of the budget spent on the military should be far, far less than 20% today. And another one of the biggest screwups that has been made regarding the budget debt for the future took place in the last decade, under the Bush Administration, when it foolishly (and unnecessarily) slashed what were already low tax rates, while drastically increasing spending at the same time.
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Just curious, what are your thoughts on Bush's role in the JFK assassination and the extinction of the dinosaurs?
 
Liquid Karma said:
Great article and great responses so far on this thread.

For me the spiraling higher education costs are just ridiculous. A quarter million dollars for an education at a private school? Are you kidding me?

Am I far off in thinking that community colleges are going to be an explosive growth industry in the next decade? As our workforce retools for the IT age, why would they waste 6 figures getting an education from some name brand diploma mill when they can be educated on the cheap and learn the very toolset they need to function in the modern job market?
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i think the concept of paying a shitload of money to go away for an undergraduate education is dying. there are so many ways to learn.

i'm not sure if the future is community colleges or not though. maybe online "college" or something like that?
 
ProfessorDeac said:
Which of those things do you not expect?
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When I went off to grad school I spent my first year living in a delapidated dorm (that has since been torn down) eating crappy cafeteria food and walking or riding the bus everywhere I want to go. I had no cable TV. I did have a computer (there was no internet). That wasn't "roughing" it. It's how most of my classmates lived. And school was still too f'in expensive.
 
bobknightfan said:
I agree wholeheartedly. Our own alma mater is a perfect example. Making the decision to go to WF today amounts to an ego trip. There is no economic justification for it.
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There hasn't been an economic justification for going to one college over another for decades. Two choices - the University of MN or St. Olaf college. I'd rather go to St. Olaf for lots of reasons. But if I send my kid to MN and put the difference in cost between the two into a trust fund and set that money free 25 years later - the kid probably be rich.
 
Milhouse said:
i think the concept of paying a shitload of money to go away for an undergraduate education is dying. there are so many ways to learn.

i'm not sure if the future is community colleges or not though. maybe online "college" or something like that?
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I think it will be a hybrid of both.

Community colleges have seen an uptick the last few years and we are just seeing the beginning of the newest paradigm of online education with things like Kahn's Academy and other efforts.
 
ThinkingWithMyDeac said:
The article is spot on. I can't believe this figure, well I can but it is ridiculous.
"Only 58 percent of Boomers have more than $25,000 put aside for retirement, so the rest will either starve or the government will have to pay for them."

Its ridiculous to call the younger generation entitled and spoiled when from that figure it is pretty clear that the boomer generation might have started late but finished strong in the area of overspending and not saving. Making the cut off 25,000 dollars is random but that means if you worked for 40 years, say from 22-62, you were able to save less than 625 dollars a year, that is saving 52 dollars a month, or simply put $1.71 a day. #BOOMERSOUT
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For the price of a cup of coffee every morning they could have been at 50K.

I was listening to NPR a few years ago. Some economist studied boomers, gen X and the generation before the boomers. He looked at personal bankruptcy rates for each generation when they were each 25 - 30 -35 and 40 (not many gen x were there yet). The boomers filed at an astounding rate at each age relative to the other two generations. When he was asked for an explanation he said something to the effect of - well, I'm a boomer and this is sad to say, but I just think we're selfish.
 
ThinkingWithMyDeac said:
The article is spot on. I can't believe this figure, well I can but it is ridiculous.
"Only 58 percent of Boomers have more than $25,000 put aside for retirement, so the rest will either starve or the government will have to pay for them."

Its ridiculous to call the younger generation entitled and spoiled when from that figure it is pretty clear that the boomer generation might have started late but finished strong in the area of overspending and not saving. Making the cut off 25,000 dollars is random but that means if you worked for 40 years, say from 22-62, you were able to save less than 625 dollars a year, that is saving 52 dollars a month, or simply put $1.71 a day. #BOOMERSOUT
Click to expand...

I was going to make this exact same post (less eloquently) but figured I had shot my load when it came to quoting the article. Nobody's more entitled than Baby Boomers, they spent their entire life spending gobs of money that they created out of thin air, and now they want us to pay for them to live forever.

#BOOMERSOUT
 
The most staggering fact in that article to me was the percentage increase in national debt-to-GDP ratio under Bush. It demonstrates an absolute systemic failure in our political system. You cannot trust any politician to truly attack this issue, whether a "conservative" Republican or Democrat.
 
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