The Generational Blind Spot-BOOM! - Page 11

Yes and there is a reason the thread is ten pages long. It contains loads of links supporting the contention.


The boomers are a boom for a reason. No other generation has the size to simply outvote them. Additionally you assign motives at 18 that aren't likely to be there on your graph. Someone who is 18 isn't too concerned about personal tax rates. Most of them hardly make enough to be taxed. You very own link notes that the generation after the boomers is much better educated, the best ever and thus wouldn't be strongly paying taxes until likely 23 or so.

Lastly, it isn't tax revenue that has gone down so much as spending that has kept going up and caused those problems. Who were the politicians who could make those decisions and cause those problems? Boomer politicians. They didn't capture the presidency until Clinton in 1992 but held lower offices before that and have held most offices since then because they are of that governing age. You assign the power at 18 and while one can vote, that isn't when a person is powerful. Look at the years of greatest earning and see who was generating the deficits then. That is where the truth lies because one doesn't lobby the government for tax cuts when they are making $7000 a year while going to college. They lobby them when they are making $200,000 a year at the height of their earning power. They vote in their peers who are of similar age and temperament to give them the breaks they all want and the spending they wall want. Boomers are at the zenith of their power now and we absolutely see the results. Trillion dollar deficits are the norm, not the exception for them. No generation is at the zenith of their power at 18 years old.

Also when looking at debt, this is merely government. We should be looking at personal where the boomers have taken on more debt than any other generation and are rolling into retirement with it. I'm not saying the generation that follows is any better in that regard but personal debt counts as well.

BTW it is considered good manners to link to your articles. I went and found it and let's dig into it a little more....in the end you'll see it supports more of what I claim than what you do.

I went and found the PDF of it here.

The very next paragraph...


Note the name of the thread... the boomer blindspot. Most Boomers have gone along doing what they have always done. Work hard, play hard, charge debt hard and often have their lives blow up every couple decades or so via divorces and other such things. They just roll up their sleeves and try to fix it all but Father Time is going to come calling for them this time. There isn't another decade to go buy and pay down the house the wife took this time. There isn't another 10 years left in those bodies to rebuild the retirement savings, refi the house and get it paid back down, or to ignore the problems any longer. Those numbers note the realize, 60% need to work and 60% already have chronic health problems. Those two are clearly on a collision course and it is deluded to believe otherwise.

They are richer than their parents, but their parents had to pay for wars and live through the Great Depression. Oh and they actually paid down those things, they didn't charge them and move on.


The article notes what I note. They had the world handed to them on a string and were growing their careers during the 80's and 90's, the exact time frame you note the deficits rising. I could vote for the first time in 1988. The oldest person in my generation was 22 at the time Reagan was elected for the second time. You hold US responsible for events that began when I was ten.

Yet the boomers weren't ten then. A lot of them were turning 30 and wanting those breaks and benefits now.


This is where the breakdown happens and it shows very bad things. A quarter are well off, very well off and why shouldn't they be. Post war American was an incredible place to make money. The boomers lived through and helped create the computer revolution so obviously they made some money there. This 25% is doing great.


This is the other end of the spectrum. These are the folks who have had their entire lives to get it together and never have. They are limping into retirement making nothing and having next to nothing and they are 25% of the largest generation EVER.

Then we have that broad middle, how are they doing?


The numbers show that basically 75% of the boomers are broke and that 25% of them that very well off distort the numbers enough to make them look better.


Broke, boozing and alone is the summary there and at rates higher than the previous generation.

The point here, is that boomers attitudes don't reflect what their bodies can do. They operate in almost a delusional state. They believe the clock will never run out on them. 60% of them have chronic health issues, but they plan to work until they are 80 years old to maintain their rate of consumption. How do those two statements jibe together and knowing what we know about 75% of them and the realities of aging, which is more likely to be true, that their bodies will break down and their divorce, debt, and health will finally take them down financially or that it will all magically work out and they will defy that ticking clock. Your link consists of two parts. One is the numbers that reflect the reality of boomers. The other is discussing how to work with them, how to market to them and what their own attitudes are about how things are going to work out for them. Those are the numbers that don't work out.

Boomers weren't 18 when Vietnam stopped. You help prove my point. They may have begun lobbying for it when they turned 18 in 1964 at the beginning of their generation. But they didn't have that full impact until the middle of their generation was 18 and the beginning of their generation was by then 29 aka almost 30.

Note the difference. You hold me responsible for electing someone when I was 10. Gen X started in 1966 according to your link. This puts the beginning of the generation at 14 years old in 1980. Even if you go back to 1965 it puts them at 15 years old. They couldn't even vote for Reagan in 1980.

By the same reasoning though, the middle and beginnings my generation would have been starting to exert power in 1992-1994 and we do know what happened during those years. Someone born in 1965 would have been 29 in 1994 and that is about the age they could really start contributing some major cash to elect candidates. The middle of the generation would have been 20 at that time and with half the generation of voting age could finally make a difference. What did we get during that timeframe and for the following years when the Gen X generation was cycling and coming of voting age? We got fiscal sanity.

Gen X was not 18 in 1980. My assetion was also that when half the generation was aged 18-30 was the time of peak influence. For Gen X which starts in 1965-1966 depending upon the source and ends in 1986 the peak year of youthful influence would have been 1992, not 1980.

Also what is with this throwing something out there with no explation or even quotation?!?


Your link also compares two halves of the Boomer generation against the latter two generations called X and Y. Is it any surprise that they would have more retirement savings as they are much older and closer to retirement than the other two groups?

This is like saying it is warmer during the day. I've got more retirement savings at 39 than I did at 30 and even more than I did at 20. That shouldn't be surprising. Also as your own link showed earlier, applying averages with such a large group can be a distortion. The 25% well off group alters the numbers for that 75% that is broke.

First they didn't lose influence, they shared influence just as now the GenX shares influence with the generation of youth that helped elect Obama. The problem was you were assigning actions to GenX when they couldn't even vote yet.

Second you didn't show a greater propensity for saving. That was the conclusion you drew from the fact that they had more retirement savings when the reality is that they had lived longer and thus had saved more as a result of living longer. Your first link explained all of this for you and you want to ignore it. It said that a very successful 25% is altering the average of the other 75%.


No it boils down to much more than that. The very links you have presented show the problem. 75% of boomers are broke. They have divorced more than any other generation in history and have the wealth destruction associated with that as well. They have believed they are above the rules and this is showing up in the very delusional manner of taking us from the world's greatest creditor to greatest debtor both as a government and themselves personally. The majority of them as noted from your own link believe they are going to keep up their current rate of consumption, which it also notes involves spending more than they make and they plan to do so by continuing to work into retirement even when 60% of them already have chronic health conditions before retirement age.

It speaks to a radically delusional state that they have carried with them their entire lives.

Really because I see (and previously read) this there.

The Younger Boomers and Generation X and Y had smaller amounts saved for retirement than the Older Boomers, but the Swing cohort had more saved than the Older Boomers. Hence, the life-cycle hypothesis that household savings tends to increase with age was supported.

Aka, you live longer, you save more. It's right there quoted for you to see.


I think I just showed I did that thanks.


Yes and your own link showed that was indeed the case for 75% of boomers with regard to savings and 60% of boomers with regard to health. Finally it showed it to be true for 60% of boomers with regard to attitude and expectations. Those were from your own links and I've provided my own earlier in the thread as well.


Your support for this is claiming that 15 year old to negative three year olds voted themselves some massive tax cuts and benefit increases starting in 1980. Clearly that isn't very persuasive reasoning for many folks out there as it defies an rational thinking.

Those were the traits within each generation that showed an increased likeliness to open retirement accounts. It was true across all generations. Your own link from Wikipedia noted Gen X has more education than the prior generation and was the best educated generation of all. That said there are certain things that can't be overcome until time winds it's course. That is precisely the point your link makes. All those traits


A president is a single person. A generation is a group of people roughly defined as about 18 years. The middle of that group is 9-10 year in and that is when the earliest influence of that group would felt. You can have some small shifts before then sure. We gave you an example with the boomers. Certainly there were protests in the 60's about Vietnam, but holding a sign isn't the same thing as giving a donation or casting a vote. When boomers could do those things in large numbers is when the war ended. The front end of a generation might be large enough to raise awareness of that generation's issues, but it is the large average section where that generation begins to move from awareness to exerting power.

That said, no generation has been able to exert power above what the boomers want because they are larger than the generation before or after them.

Yes and media rhetoric is reality.


That little anecdote explains nothing. It is akin to trying to claim The Simpson's is real life.

Don't worry e#. If the thread has taught us anything, it is that the boomers do indeed have that blind spot. The kids and grandkids are lazy and apathetic if they don't want to pay off $17 trillion in debt (adding back the S.S. IOU's) and $100 trillion in promised benefits. They don't want to pay their 'fair share.'

RCP notes the that future generations don't want to be chumps to the boomers.


The party affiliations can change quickly when one generation is trying to put another generation on the hook for trillions more.

How the baby boomers bust Britain: Self-indulgence has left the country financially, socially and even morally crippled


Be it here or in Britain, the Boomer legacy remains the same. Selfishness and narcissism with all that entails will be all they have in the end.

Here's two recent articles for you.


Boomers still doing drugs as seniors.

Almost 5 percent of aging Baby Boomers in the United States are abusing drugs, a new government report shows.

That's about 4.3 million adults over the age of 50 who are smoking marijuana, abusing prescription medication and engaging in other illicit drug activity -- a number that far exceeds that of their parents' generation.......

......"This population tends to have other health problems, especially chronic health problems," Delany explained. "And as we age we don't metabolize drugs the same way."

Marijuana use on the rise with seniors

The most dramatic rise was between the age range of 55 to 59-years-old, in which the use of the drug tripled from 1.6 percent in 2002 to 5.1 percent in 2008.

Researchers believe that as the 78 million boomers age, there will be further increases.

Most folks would try to avoid such issues as they get older. As is usual, the boomers punch the accelerator. Perhaps you've smoked an extra 20 years beyond when you knew it was harmful. Sure you should have quit sooner but hey, I'm going to live forever. Now at the age at which those lung conditions are likely to flare up, increasing numbers (not all) of them are instead LIGHTING UP to get high.

You get older, the body does less, you learn to treat it better. As a generation for the boomers, the numbers are higher than previous generations and they aren't walking away from the bad habits, they are taking them up again.

The "technicality" generation.


You want to talk about an op-ed that manages to boil down the basic modus operandi of an entire generation, well this is it.