2 ms·

You can't help but be bitter about this. We (the young) didn't do anything, or ask for anything. But thanks to the speculative greed of previous generations, w

You can't help but be bitter about this. We (the young) didn't do anything, or ask for anything. But thanks to the speculative greed of previous generations, we're saddled with (even post-crash) unaffordable housing prices that favor the already-wealthy. Buying a home on a middle class working income is nigh impossible, unlike in their generation. So far from joining the speculators, we can't even buy a roof over our own heads in most places, especially places with jobs. Our governmental services are collapsing in a large part due to the money we're pouring into pensions - pensions that previous generations voted to give themselves. Ones far more generous than anything history has ever seen. Everything can go, including our education system, but the pension is sacrosanct. Touch it and a legion of Baby Boomers will have you for lunch. We're the generation of suckers. We (and probably our children, too) are the ones who will be paying for the ludicrous excesses of the Boomers, while getting nothing ourselves. Defined benefit pensions? Hah! Traditionally people pay into their future. We are stuck paying our past. Bitter? Me? How could you tell?

tptacek 15y ago
They were also conscripted into wars with dizzying American casualties, had parents and siblings who died of polio, lived under continuous threat of nuclear annihilation, and had to call someone up on the phone to place a stock market order. Oh, and that whole internet thing. Suggest looking forward, not back. What do we do next?
- potatolicious 15y ago
  This is about looking forward. We're in dire economic straits, our funding for something as basic and fundamental s our children's educations are being threatened. Public libraries are closing across the country. Research funding is reaching dreadfully low levels - especially in comparison to countries that we now find ourselves competing with. And on top of that, people are getting poorer. Even folks "protected" by traditionally pro-labour unions are being thrown under the bus to protect the pensions of its older members. The treatment of young union members by the organization that supposedly protects their rights is laughable if it weren't so damned unjust. So yes, let's look forward. We face a desperate economic situation, in which we must all make deep cuts and great sacrifices if this country is to have a competitive future. Our education system has certainly paid the price. Our arts and culture, too. Taxes are rising, but yet the greatest liability we have is still pension funding. The one quarter where no sacrifices, no compromises must be made. Toss the band program. Screw math textbooks. Fuck scientific research. The pension is holy! It must not be touched! So yes, we are looking at the future, and these people will doom it. Even if we're not playing the blame game - there is not much we can do productively to save ourselves unless pension compromise can be brought to the table. Unfunded pension liabilities are the threat to our economic existence - the over-promised benefits are really going to gut us. Even if we continued along this path of "everything must go in the name of funding pension liabilities", it's still not enough. Without cuts to pensions we're screwed no matter what.
  - tptacek 15y ago
    I like your comments so much that I specifically follow them, but this comment would be equally as informative if you kept only the last graf.

tptacek 15y ago

They were also conscripted into wars with dizzying American casualties, had parents and siblings who died of polio, lived under continuous threat of nuclear annihilation, and had to call someone up on the phone to place a stock market order. Oh, and that whole internet thing. Suggest looking forward, not back. What do we do next?

potatolicious 15y ago
This is about looking forward. We're in dire economic straits, our funding for something as basic and fundamental s our children's educations are being threatened. Public libraries are closing across the country. Research funding is reaching dreadfully low levels - especially in comparison to countries that we now find ourselves competing with. And on top of that, people are getting poorer. Even folks "protected" by traditionally pro-labour unions are being thrown under the bus to protect the pensions of its older members. The treatment of young union members by the organization that supposedly protects their rights is laughable if it weren't so damned unjust. So yes, let's look forward. We face a desperate economic situation, in which we must all make deep cuts and great sacrifices if this country is to have a competitive future. Our education system has certainly paid the price. Our arts and culture, too. Taxes are rising, but yet the greatest liability we have is still pension funding. The one quarter where no sacrifices, no compromises must be made. Toss the band program. Screw math textbooks. Fuck scientific research. The pension is holy! It must not be touched! So yes, we are looking at the future, and these people will doom it. Even if we're not playing the blame game - there is not much we can do productively to save ourselves unless pension compromise can be brought to the table. Unfunded pension liabilities are the threat to our economic existence - the over-promised benefits are really going to gut us. Even if we continued along this path of "everything must go in the name of funding pension liabilities", it's still not enough. Without cuts to pensions we're screwed no matter what.
- tptacek 15y ago
  I like your comments so much that I specifically follow them, but this comment would be equally as informative if you kept only the last graf.