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Baby Boomers are directly responsible for all the debt in the country, they invented it to pay for their lavish life styles they couldn’t afford and so they inv
by will_brown 8y ago
Baby Boomers are directly responsible for all the debt in the country, they invented it to pay for their lavish life styles they couldn’t afford and so they invented debt to kick the can down the road to future generations, and payment has come due. 1950 federal debt was ~$250B now $21T. Credit cards didn’t exist before baby boomers now $19T in consumer debt. Student loans didn’t exist before the boomers, now it’s more than $1T debt. Medicare/Medicaid didn’t exist before the boomer generation, now that’s >$50T in unfounded debt by all estimates.
What a revelation.
As it turns out all this bullshit about millennials not wanting to get married, or own houses, or own a car is manufactured news...and people really do want to have families and own things, only they can’t afford any of those things.
Wow next thing we will hear is millennials are not choosing to be uninsured, but they can’t afford healthcare insurance.
Edit: removed “Medicare/social security” with Medicare/Medicaid...that slip triggered the HN pedantics and in their mind made the remainder of the comment “patently false”
- toomuchtodo 8y agoI agree with most of this except the part about inventing debt; come on now, debt has existed as a concept far back into human history. EDIT: Yes all, I understand credit is now more easily available than ever, and I would argue that ease of credit is a substantial problem allowing for the transfer of responsibility to future generations. @infogulch: I agree with everything you said, but that is not what OP said, and hence, not what I replied to. Internet Talking is hard!
- marviel 8y agoLast evening while we were out to beers, a friend recommended me a book apparently reviewing precisely this history: https://www.amazon.com/Debt-First-5-000-Years/dp/1612191290 https://www.amazon.com/Debt-First-5-000-Years/dp/1612191290
- toomuchtodo 8y agoYes, this was the book I was thinking of when I wrote my comment. Do read it, it's fantastic.
- rellui 8y agoYes it has existed before but never so readily available. I believe credit card was first introduced in 1950's and modern mortgages in 1930's.
- scotty79 8y agoSure but what's fair in terms of debt was seriously limited. Now with payday loans all bets are off.
- downrightmike 8y agoYes, but you couldn't spend it like water until the credit card. And that started with the Diner's Club card in 1950: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diners_Club_International https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diners_Club_International
- infogulch 8y agoThat is absolutely correct, paying back debt has existed nearly as far back as we have recorded history in the form of slavery / indentured servitude. But, not to put words in OP's mouth, I don't think that's what OP was saying. Baby boomers have normalized the concept of average people using debt to get things they want now but can't afford, and millennials are the first generation that has grown up with it pervasively. Debt is a powerful tool for enabling opportunities when the decision is highly calculated and considered. For example a business that can directly weigh a break-even point for going into debt to make an investment that would simply have not have been possible otherwise. Or perhaps buying a house (though that is a bit more debatable these days). When people "just put it on the CC", that debt is not carefully calculated or considered. When people go to college without a path to a career that can pay it back it's also not calculated or considered. Debt is like a scalpel, but individuals use it like it's a hammer.
- will_brown 8y agoWell in My comment I expressly state the US federal debt was at $250B in 1950, so I know debt existed before baby boomers. My comment really set off the pedantics.
- dvtrn 8y agoAs it turns out all this bullshit about millennials not wanting to get married, or own houses, or own a car is manufactured news Well yes, that is after all a central point made by the article: “We find little evidence that millennial households have tastes and preference for consumption that are lower than those of earlier generations, once the effects of age, income, and a wide range of demographic characteristics are taken into account,” wrote authors Christopher Kurz, Geng Li and Daniel J. Vine.
- marcosdumay 8y ago> they invented it to pay for their lavish life styles they couldn’t afford Debit does not work that way over the entire economy. It can change the distribution of wealth, it can incentive people to act differently, it can change the cost of transactions. But it can not anticipate future wealth.
- awakeasleep 8y agoHow are boomers as a generation of people responsible for the '78 Supreme Court decision to allow national banks to export the interest rate law of their home state into any state where they do business? Thats what caused the credit card explosion https://www.creditcards.com/credit-card-news/marquette-interest-rate-usury-laws-credit-cards-1282.php https://www.creditcards.com/credit-card-news/marquette-inter...
- whatok 8y agoCredit card debt is a small percentage of overall household debt.
- kimmeld 8y agoSocial Security was founded in 1935, so before boomers ever were born, although it had a different feel from today's program. Social Security is funded (you actually pay taxes for it), but the rest of the government borrows from it quite recklessly which is why republicans want you to believe it's not funded. With simply upping the ceiling on the amount taxed into it we can easily fund it for the foreseeable future. Now of course the right wants you to think otherwise so they can kill the program for future generations but that's just not backed up by facts.
- jedberg 8y agoUpping the contribution limit without upping the benefit would just be a hidden tax on the upper middle class, but not the rich, who do not work for salary. If you want to tax the rich, you need to raise the upper tax rates.
- toomuchtodo 8y agoYou need to implement social security taxes on investment income, not raising the SS taxable cap on wages, to accomplish this. It makes sense to not overly tax burden wage income (productive effort) while taxing investment income (rent seeking) at a higher rate, no?
- kimmeld 8y agoI'd just go with adding all income (investment or otherwise) into a total pool and then tax that with a single set of rules instead of this stupidly complex tax system.
- kimmeld 8y agoIt's exactly the opposite of hidden. It literally shows up as a separate item on your taxes. However, I don't think most people actually realize that it's a regressive tax that goes away when you make more money. Though society is at a place where a lot of people don't care if elderly people starve and freeze to death just as long as the upper class get slightly lower tax burdens.
- 8y ago
- darepublic 8y agoseems like a generalization to say 'baby boomers directly responsible for...' How do you consign direct responsibility to a group of people only tied together by their year of birth? Are you sure you are not yourself unconsciously kicking the can down the road through some horrid act or inaction on your part?
- bambataa 8y agoThe argument is that the baby boomers, by being a demographic bulge, have a relatively large electoral influence and so over time government policies have been disproportionately targeted to their changing needs. While 'directly responsible' is a bit of a stretch, at least in the UK voting preferences are currently quite correlated with age (though this hasn't always been the case). Because the current crop of older people are much more likely to vote than younger people, the political parties have made various commitments to protect and increase social security for pensioners. These pensioners are of the same generation that had free education in the 60/70s and then voted for tax cuts in the 80s when they were earning, of course. Yes it is a generalisation, it's far from the only factor that determines policies and the demographic bulge isn't as pronounced in the UK as it is in the US but I still think it's interesting to see how government policies have changed to follow the bulge as it ages. Of course, many baby boomers will tell you that they paid taxes all their lives, thank you very much, and had mortgage rates of 25% etc etc etc.
- pasbesoin 8y agoMy Great Uncle Joe served in World War II. 4 years tromping around Europe. In his 80's, he still woke up at night, screaming. So his wife would tell us; he never spoke much about that. She lost her first husband, Fred, to the war. Society calls them "The Greatest Generation". They couldn't have kids. But they ended up running a drive in, where the kids who worked for them became like family. They put more than one through college, and took one in when he needed a home. Decades later, those kids would call and visit them. Well, those kids may have turned out pretty well. But, generally, I've come to think of those who came after this "Greatest Generation" as "The Selfish Generation". Really, we're speaking of more than one generation, here. The symbolic touch phrase might come from the 1980's, written in the movie "Wall Street": Greed is good! To which I might respond, "Divided we fall."
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 8y ago> Medicare/social security didn’t exist before the boomer generation Patently false. In the US, Social Security was instituted as part of Roosevelt's New Deal in 1935. From a more global perspective similar systems have been around much longer.
- will_brown 8y agoSorry Medicare and medicade. It doesn’t matter if similar systems have been around much longer, governments have been around much longer than The US government and none of them are $21T in debt.
- titzer 8y ago> Baby Boomers are directly responsible for all the debt in the country, Not just that, but the sad state of infrastructure, the condition of the environment, and climate denial. If WWII was the crucible of the greatest generation, then the (relative) peace of the 60s and 70s was the cradle of the worst generation. We (I'm 38) are now inheritors of a pretty messed up world on a very dangerous trajectory. I hope we can muster the courage to face it instead of being led like zombies toward our tech fantasies (myself included).
- eppsilon 8y agoThe US' national debt was 89% of GDP in 1950. Now it is 104%. [1] I somewhat agree with you (there was a long period in between when the debt-GDP % was much lower), but the current situation isn't as dire as you suggest. 1. https://www.thebalance.com/national-debt-by-year-compared-to-gdp-and-major-events-3306287 https://www.thebalance.com/national-debt-by-year-compared-to...
- dbatten 8y agoWeren't there some expensive wars around that time? I think I'm recalling that correctly. Seriously, though, a fairer point of comparison might be the late '60s and early '70s - right when Boomers were entering adulthood. National debt as a percentage of GDP was in the 30s around then. Still, your response to the parent comment is still somewhat justified - yes, national debt is higher now, but it's not like it's orders of magnitude higher, right?
- eppsilon 8y agoYeah, it's not an unprecedented situation. What's concerning is that we have this level of debt after a period of relative peace and stability. (Though I vaguely recall there being some expensive wars recently too.)
- beefman 8y agoTo a first approximation, only foreign-held debt matters https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/HBFIGDQ188S https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/HBFIGDQ188S https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Composition_of_U.S._Long-Term_Treasury_Debt_2000-2014.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Composition_of_U.S._Long-...
- will_brown 8y ago>but the current situation isn't as dire as you suggest. But I didn’t say it was dire, that’s you reading “dire” into facts and numbers, which should be telling.
- eppsilon 8y ago