[quote=pri_dk][quote=eavesdropper]The first Boomers didn’t turn 65 until January 2010. Tell me again how the retirement of those rich, avaricious Baby Boomers is responsible for income inequality?[/quote]
Well, I think the rich ones retired well before age 65. I know plenty that have been retired for more than a decade.[/quote]
So do I. But they weren’t able to collect SS retirement, which is the point I was trying to make. Paul Ryan (and possibly many of the Republican congress who seem to see him as their version of Moses) would like to blame the retirement of boomers as the reason for the shift of “entitlement” program payments from the lowest economic group to those “wealthy” older people. Aside from all his other flawed logic, there’s that pesky issue of exactly how many boomers QUALIFIED to draw SS retirement payments during the period in question. Most SS recipients wait until age 65 to start drawing, but one can draw smaller payments by age 62.
(1) The earliest boomers turned 62 in January 2008 (THANK YOU, BG!!!)
(2) The data covers the period from 1979 to 2007.
Therefore, the Boomers can’t be blamed for the shift in inequality demonstrated by this data.
I can’t believe that Paul Ryan is trying to take on older Americans. It’s obvious (at least to a few people) that he’s not terribly bright. But, man!! Someone needs to explain to him and his pals that he’s not playing nice with the group that
a) votes the most (by far!)
b) contributes the most money to political campaigns
What’s even more ironic is that Paul Ryan is precisely the kind of candidate that older ultraconservative folks like: good-looking, dark haired, square-jawed, white ….There will be many who will stick by him, no matter how far he strays (case in point: Herman Cain), but if they’re given a choice, they’ll dump him.
The whole thing is so laughable……but, in a society that would rather have a scapegoat so that they don’t have to look in the mirror, it’s just the kind of thing that will catch on. Recent studies that point out the large amounts of “wealth” that older Americans have compared to younger are fueling this.
a) Journalists and pundits aren’t reporting or interpreting the data correctly;
b) the reports say “older Americans” not “boomers”. BIG difference. HUUUGE!
c) The “wealth” they talk about includes equity in older Americans’ homes. Aside from the fact that, in the current market conditions, it is virtually impossible to ascertain accurate info on home values, there is also the issue that many seniors aren’t able to sell their homes to get at that value. Yes, it should be included, but it should also be clearly spelled out that the “wealth” of most older Americans is not piles of cash and liquid investments. There are still a tremendous number of seniors living well below the poverty line, and because they own a home (it could be – and often is – a tumbledown shack that they couldn’t get rid of if they tried, and that they can’t afford to heat or repair), they don’t qualify for ANY assistance at all. In the meantime, 15 year-olds who’ve never worked a day in their lives (and who, themselves, are the children of parents who haven’t ever worked) have children and qualify for all sorts of federal and state aid.
d) And that illustrates another point: Many older Americans have “wealth” (in reality, “wealth” = no debt, a paid-off mortgage, and 35 bucks in the bank) because they’ve been much more prudent in their spending habits. Most realized that there was an important distinction between being able to *BUY* something, and being able to *AFFORD* it, and they have the self-discipline to keep from crossing that line. That went away in the mid-90s, when the banks were trying to lend out all that cheap money the Fed was giving them, and sold the idea to the poor and the middle-class that they weren’t poor and middle-class.
And the problem is that they’re still not accepting of the idea that they’re poor and middle-class. They’re in a temporary cash-crunch because the “boomers” stole all their money when they weren’t looking.
