http://www.cnbc.com/id/41969508 Government payouts—including Social Security, Medicare and unemployment insurance—make up more than a third of total wages and salaries of the U.S. population, a record figure that will only increase if action isn’t taken before the majority of Baby Boomers enter retirement. Even as the economy has recovered, social welfare benefits make up 35 percent of wages and salaries this year, up from 21 percent in 2000 and 10 percent in 1960, according to TrimTabs Investment Research using Bureau of Economic Analysis data. ... The economist gives the country two stark choices. In order to get welfare back to its pre-recession ratio of 26 percent of pay, “either wages and salaries would have to increase $2.3 trillion, or 35 percent, to $8.8 trillion, or social welfare benefits would have to decline $500 billion, or 23 percent, to $1.7 trillion,” she said.
I don't think it is accurate to classify social security, medicare, or unemployment insurance - that is, any of the things mentioned in your quote - as 'handouts' or as part of the 'welfare state', since the people receiving those benefits by and large paid into the funds in the past. Those things are basically insurance programs, not welfare. If you get into a car crash and your insurance pays your bills, are you receiving 'handouts'? Are you 'on welfare'? barfo
Not sure I understand the question. Sounds like the same thing to me, but the latter one might continue into the present? barfo
I don't think insurance companies would keep paying out for you without raising your rates if they were $600B in the hole each year because of you. And if the government borrowed the money to let them do so, without having them pay it back, then imo that's a handout.
The larger issue is that we're on an unsustainable path. It's not like this demographic time bomb wasn't forseen. It's just that instead of spending the last 30 years building up a massive surplus to pay for the Baby Boomers' retirement, we squandered those funds on expanding the scope and scale of government. Now the post Baby Boomers have to pay the price. If the parents of the Baby Boomers were the Greatest Generation, then the Baby Boomers are the Worst Generation. Spoiled and coddled from cradle to grave. They spent the treasure given to them by previous generations of sacrifice and now look to their progeny to sacrifice even more to shepherd them through their sunset years.
Solid post. (Although I'd say that "they squandered funds on expanding the scope and scale of government while refusing to pay taxes for it.") I wouldn't call them "the Worst Generation," because there's some solid competition there. Was this generation worse than, say, the ones that basically performed genocide on Native Americans? Or squandered the great opportunity for racial reconciliation of post-Civil War reconstruction? Or if you want to go farther back to pre-independence when we stole and enslaved so many Africans for the sake of agriculture? And the Baby Boomers were, after all, the dominant generation of the fall of the USSR and the rise of the internet. They had some really great points, just like those other generations did too. I don't know if I'm comfortable with "Worst Generation," but I've heard "Locust Generation" used occasionally, and that handle definitely seems to fit.
