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> I'd be a lot more sympathetic to the plight of the elderly in such a position if they weren't, you know, basically kicking away the ladder they used to climb to the top, spend the country broke, and then continue to vote entitlements while passing a faux-future of success demanding everybody get a Bachelor's to even be a Secretary answering phones. This whole system is so broken pointing it out sounds extreme or mean, but it's just obvious to me over these past 15+ years of working.

It's funny to think that this was exactly what I was thinking when I'd been working for 10+ years in my early thirties looking for a house after they'd skyrocketed in value the previous few years. Inflation had eaten away at any savings I'd made, gas lines were a recent memory as well as several recessions one after the other. Oh, this was in the early 1980s.

I get it. I've got kids coming into this economy and I'm worried for them. I also get that there are a lot of people my age who really are self-centered a-holes and consistently vote to keep the pie moving up toward them.

What I think we need is massive infrastructure investment funded by both current taxes (to get the people with money to pay) and low cost debt (so the beneficiaries of the investsments can pay) to kick the hiring structure down to the people that can do those jobs.

For sure - I think there's a middle ground, a real sweet spot where infrastructure investment puts able bodies to work, pays them a fair wage (or maybe generous so they spend/kick-start consumerism/pay down debt), and actually improves the long-term outlook of the nation. Those FDR "make work" programs did a lot of good things that I think we'd be wise to study for potential emulation. The CCC initiative.

Politically, to a large voting bloc - disenfranchised Millenials - I think it could pull some water (not to mention stir up encouragement from the older population that "those dang kids" are doing something good with their time). People would have to go where the work is, more than likely, but that's a trade-off. Unfortunately a great deal of the "low interest debt" seems to be funneling into equities and buy-backs, only worsening the transfer of wealth to investor classes rather than working classes, at a time when, really, it doesn't make sense to do that.

I'm amazed that this is the first halfway-reasonable post to come out of this discussion. The real story here is the demographic breakdown the western world is experiencing, and that Japan has been knee-deep in since the 90s. This has tons of implications, from expected 401k returns that are expected to fund our retirements, to the evidenced fact that older people are working longer, retiring later, and hence eating up a lot of the income and job gains made in the last decade.

Honestly it took me a long time to turn 'anger' into 'acceptance' and then into 'context' regarding this subject. I was raised in a very frugal home that spent good money on "good" things (ex: education, learning experiences, an Encyclopedia Set for Christmas one year), avoided really buying in to materialism (ex: driving older, paid off cars) and I appreciate how different this was from apparently a great deal of my peers. It's unfortunate. If I could go back and tell my parents to cool it with the "success is earned here in the US more often than not" line of motivation and be a little more realistic about power dynamics, I wouldn't have spent as much time trying to figure it out, to see things as they kind of sort of work. I'm not angry anymore, per se, just becoming a grumpy old man, as one is wont to do.

What really angers me (coming from a similarly frugal upbringing and taking that into my adult life) is how frugality has been penalized at a macro level. The last 7 yrs of zero interest rates, the easy access to money prior to that, etc, have just made responsible living actually seem 'irresponsible'.

Frugality and responsible budgeting are "superpowers".

Your neighbors who took those zero interest rate loans and are living "the life" going on vacations and buying new cars... it's all a big show, and it looks grand from outside, but they're probably experiencing all kinds of stresses that you don't. These are the kinds of people who keep the psycho-pharma complex profitable.

Or, as my parents said a long time ago, "When they die, a bunch of trucks show up to take it all away."

Except that when the majority of the voting population succumbs to it, they end up voting for policies/politicians to paper over or backstop their problems.

> spend the country broke

I'm 59. I don't remember doing that. (And are we actually broke?) I do remember voting. Everyone I voted for said one thing to me, and did what they were told by their donors and the MIC.

I hope I live long enough to see what the currently upcoming generations get blamed for in their old age.

If any generation had the power to change things how things ended up today, it was yours. To pick one example: all the supreme court justices who presided over the Citizens United case were appointed during your prime years.

If a generation inherits a better world than they leave to their kids, I don't think they get to blame how hard it would have been to have done better. The buck's got to stop somewhere.

And having failed to do little but enrich themselves, at the very least your generation can stop talking about lazy and entitled the younger generation is. The hypocrisy is staggering.

If you're going to blame voters for the Supreme Court nominees of their presidential picks, then it's fair to say that the political class is completely disconnected from the common people. In other words, it's not their fault, but rather the Elites'.

Those nominated for the Supreme Court come from a short list of federal judges and other legal wonks. No average voter has any idea of the name of any of these people. Therefore, they cannot be said to be voting on a candidate based on their Supreme Court picks, except in the most liberal/conservative sense.

Case in point: Merrick Garland. He was on everyone's short list, including mentions by Republican leaders as a candidate who could be confirmed by the Senate. But the average voted hadn't heard his name before he was nominated by Obama.

It's really the political class that sold us out to privatization and globalization. That's where the buck stops. It happened regardless of who was voted in. Both parties were captured, and 3rd parties are not a realistic option in our system. We are /not really/ a democracy.

This fall's upcoming presidential election so perfectly illustrates that: which Wall St friendly New Yorker would you like? Both suck? Well, too bad!

Note: I still feel it's important to participate in local elections to try to have some counterbalance to the a-holes at the "Imperial" level of government.

> This fall's upcoming presidential election so perfectly illustrates that: which Wall St friendly New Yorker would you like? Both suck?

To the extent that's true, its the result of major party primary elections and other processes and the decisions voters made in those (including the decision to stay out of them.)

FWIW, I did vote in the primary, just not for either of the remaining candidates :-)

I can understand that many people did not / would not show up, though. That's a problem...

> it's not their fault, but rather the Elites'.

"Whoever is responsible, it's not me and my friends!"

> No average voter has any idea of the name of any of these people.

"I would like to not do any research, because taking responsibility is hard"

> the average voted hadn't heard his name before he was nominated by Obama.

Which is fine. The average voter knew (or should have known) what Obama stood for. What Bush stood for. What Clinton stood for. And so on. They could've then reasonably inferred what kind of judges they'd pick. And by looking at the age of SCOTUS judges, you have a good guess when replacements happens.

The only judge where you could've made the case is surprising given who nominated them is Scalia - he tipped a bit further on issues than Reagan.

Merrick is right in line with everything Obama ever stood for. Nobody is surprised that Obama would nominate a centrist with slight liberal leanings. The particular name might be unknown, but the choice isn't.

> It's really the political class that sold us out to privatization and globalization.

That political class didn't come into life fully formed. People voted for them, and shaped the direction of politics. And they're there because of money in politics. Which points us right back at the Supreme court, via Buckley vs. Valeo. (and Citizens United vs. FEC)

(Not to mention that many people liked the initial effects of globalization and privatization. It's not like nobody voted for NAFTA, e.g.)

> at the very least your generation can stop talking about lazy and entitled the younger generation is

That sounds like demonizing a whole anonymous group based on personal perceptions.

The grandparent didn't say anything about how the younger generations are lazy and entitled.

Her/his point was, I think, that, even people in a democracy, have very little control over what policies are followed. And that you will see that happening to you, too.

Because I feel it's necessary to challenge this...

> If any generation had the power to change things how things ended up today, it was yours. To pick one example: all the supreme court justices who presided over the Citizens United case were appointed during your prime years.

The laws overturned in Citizens United had only been on the books a scant few years, and those laws made exercises of free speech illegal.

Whether or not big money in politics is a problem, the Citizens United decision was decided in favor of free speech moreso than in favor of dark money, and it's quite likely that if you voted for the presidents who appointed the majority justices in citizens united that you also voted for the guy whose law was overturned by it. Ergo, casting it as a one-side versus the other form of complicity does not work.

It's a figure of speech. If you take the amount of taxpayer monies spent in questionably necessary war in Iraq (re: genuine threat to US Citizens - not interests - Citizens), toss in a large percentage of predatory student loans ($1T outstanding now), and make healthcare a ticket to insolvency, then yes, functionally speaking, we're broke. I'm just glad in 2008 the entire world felt the monetary swirlie as well, not that it improves the outlook of our species or anything, but purely from self-interest.

> I'm 59. I don't remember doing that. (And are we actually broke?) I do remember voting. Everyone I voted for said one thing to me, and did what they were told by their donors and the MIC.

You specifically, unlikely.

Your generation brought in Reagan. Your generation (along with Gen X) pretty much has run the government since 2000. The great shift to the right was largely your doing and would never have been sustained if your generation wasn't what it was. :/

http://www.people-press.org/2015/04/30/a-different-look-at-g...

You brought the country so far to the right your generation actually flipped from R to D. It was truly quite the amazing transformation from relative sanity to batshit crazy. It completely obliterated balance in this country.

http://www.vox.com/2016/7/25/12256510/republican-party-trump...

> “Goldwater’s nomination in 1964 was a historical disaster for the conservative movement,” Roy tells me, “because for the ensuing decades, it identified Democrats as the party of civil rights and Republicans as the party opposed to civil rights.”

For better or worse, your generation and Gen X has to own the shift to the right in this country because you are largely the generations responsible for it. That rightward shift has gutted everything the Millenials depended on to climb economically from schools to infrastructure to rational tax policies.

However, your generation (along with Gen X) brought in Reagan

Generation X was under 18 when Reagan was elected.

Yeah I could have written that clearer.

I was 15. Eventually I realized wen I grew up what a disaster it was for (most of) the country to to reject a former naval officer, engineer, and family business operator in favor of an actor from monkey-movies. As well as allowing Reagan's cohort of clowns to reject Keynesian economics in favor of all this supply side fiction. Great for concentrating wealth, not so great for growing a bigger pie.

People fall for bread and circuses.

No generation is a monolith. I and lots of us were and are opposed to the rightward shift, although I'm not opposed to people having right/conservative viewpoints and acting on them. People have a right to speak, and to vote for their direction. Sometimes people win, sometimes people lose. Sometimes things go really badly, but we can't all be President or members of Congress.

You speak to your friends, you do what you can within your life, you support justice and oppose actual evil (not sloganed evil). You respect respectful people of all politics. You play with your kids and hope for the best.

> No generation is a monolith.

You need to realize it isn't personal against you.

If a majority of a group vote in favor of X, they bear some responsibility for it. Particularly when they don't rebuke it after the fact.

> People have a right to speak, and to vote for their direction. Sometimes people win, sometimes people lose. Sometimes things go really badly, but we can't all be President or members of Congress.

Obama and HRC were (economic policy wise) 60s Republicans. Modern Republicans are basically Reagan-derivatives.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2015/11/05/...

> One moment in the third Republican presidential debate encapsulates everything terrible about baby boomers and the way they’ve pillaged the U.S. economy. It came from Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, a Generation Xer, who offered the standard line — you can hear it from the mouth of almost any American politician today — on how to keep Medicare and Social Security solvent. Rubio defended the idea that future workers will need to retire later or receive fewer benefits from those safety-net programs than current retirees. “Everyone up here tonight that’s talking about reforms,” he stipulated, was “talking about reforms for future generations. Nothing has to change for current beneficiaries.”

I don't feel the need to be polite about it when elected politicians are comfortable stating their plan to "reform" the system is to screw me and people my age in favor of another group of people.

I guess it depends on how you define broke. Is our debt greater than 100% GDP? Yes is it. Is there any sort of plan to repay that debt in a lifetime? No, not really. A lot of people would consider that broke.

Any time there is a budget deficit, there is borrowing. The borrowing is done against future earnings by future taxpayers. Now it seems to me that if money is borrowed and not paid entirely back within a generation, then those who borrowed have essentially stolen wealth from their children and grandchildren.

But what if the money borrowed was invested in such a way that it will create returns that benefit the next generation? Education and infrastructure would be obvious examples. I'm not saying that this is what happened but borrowing in itself doesn't necessarily inflict any harm on future generations.

> Is our debt greater than 100% GDP? Yes is it.

That's (if the unit of analysis is "us", as in the country, rather than the government itself) arguably loosely analogous to one piece of one's personal debt exceeding 100% of annual income, and not at all the definition of being broke.

> Is there any sort of plan to repay that debt in a lifetime? No, not really.

That's having long-term structural debt, which, again, is nothing like being broke.

> A lot of people would consider that broke.

I don't really think that's true. The government is neither unable to pay its current obligations (it occasionally approaches choosing not to do so, but is nowhere close to being unable to do so).

Why would being broke have anything to do with the movement of celestial objects?

If someone makes 100k and has a 110k mortgage, they are broke?

> I hope I live long enough to see what the currently upcoming generations get blamed for in their old age.

Actually, if Trump wins, they'll get blamed for Donald Trump. Each and every one of them. :)

I wish I could find the link to an American Heritage article on a female (I believe) that was on a failed crusade to overcome the amount of poverty, poor conditions and voicelessness in America for the elderly at (I believe) the turn of the century or first decades..

I am very glad many older Americans can make it. Taking care of the non-working elderly Americans is mostly a chore that I see in both my day job and my family's own history.

One true benefit of being an older worker is you don't ever have to put up with any BS at your job. I work now at the most hated retailer and love it, but will quit the minute I stop liking it. I will move on to the next part time job. When I was in the tech scene I never had the choice to leave because the pay was too good. But as an older dude, the freedom from saying "Screw you employer" is better than power or prestige

There is a lot of demographic effect in that number, as the 55+ cohort is a larger number of people because of the Baby Boom.

The data tells us that almost all of the new jobs created since the recession have gone to those with at least a college education:

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-06-30/americans-...

Err .. how does one get an SS statement? I'm 37 .. don't recall seeing one. Do you have to request it? As far as I know, I contribute into SS every paycheck.

You can create a my Social Security account at the Social Security Administration web site: https://www.ssa.gov/myaccount/

There you can view your statement.

I got these years in the mail several years ago, and then again last year. I looked it up at the time, and the mailing is infrequent and depends on the budget.

Serious question: I keep reading about high real unemployment in the U.S. and in Europe. Then 2 paragraphs later I will read something along the lines of how immigration is great because a large number of workers are needed in U.S. and Europe.

Can anyone point me to some well argued work that squares the above 2 sentences? I'm an immigrant to the U.S. myself, so I'm not anti-immigrant per se, it's just that some things have left me scratching my head.

While I don't have the links to provide right away, the "unemployment rate" in the US is around 6%, but to get to that number, a large number of people who haven't had a meaningful job for a long time and have "given up looking for work" are simply not counted as part of the labor force. Thus, in the US, labor force participation rates are at an all time low - directly in contrast to the low unemployment rate talked about.

A large number of workers are needed in the US to do low-wage tasks - pretty much so their employer can profit from their labor - and some of the issue is that illegal immigrants wouldn't be counted as part of the labor force (because they aren't supposed to be here), but in theory, they are displacing the opportunity for Citizens to do those jobs.

The issues are more complex than I describe, and they certainly will apply to skilled labor too (ex: nurses to care for an aging population). One of the major contentions is that companies, in reality, post jobs with requirements that are high (10+ years! X, Y, Z skills!) but offer a salary or compensation that is way, way below market value. This means that technically yes, the company can not find a qualified candidate to do the job, because they have targeted people who would be willing to do it for much less just to, well, have an opportunity to get into the US.

It is very backwards for the US to be "anti-immigration" as a general concept (it's the foundation of the nation!), so how the arguments get twisted make it hard to figure out in some ways. This explanation is simply my perspective using my observations and stuff I read, so it is not peer reviewed or anything like that!

> are simply not counted as part of the labor force

Which is why I said "real unemployment." The official rate may be 6% but the real rate may be 20% (if we were to count the people who have given up and are now on welfare).

over 55 can afford to do jobs like cashier because they likely don't have to rent (in most cases).

All our problems are laid at the door of land price ramping.

Land is really cheap in most of the US, that does not really help as much as you might think. Sure, your house might be 40-80k but good luck finding a good job or customers.

IMO, a lot of this has to do with housing subsides keeping people near city's who don't need to be near city's. If your rent has not kept up with inflation for the last 20+ years then why move? You don't have any equity to liquidate and rent control is keeping the price stable so just stay.

If you take SSN early you can only make so much before feds take back 50% of it for each dollar you earn. So, why lose 1/2 or more of your benefit and take a more stressful job.

over 55 can afford to do jobs like cashier because they likely don't have to rent (in most cases)

Anecdotally, I know an astounding number of people over 55 that still hold a mortgage. Hell, I've known people who retired with a mortgage.

So I'm guessing that in many cases they're a cashier because if they don't work they'll lose the house.

<<< So I'm guessing that in many cases they're a cashier because if they don't work they'll lose the house.

Heck no! Stop working, start dying.

> So I'm guessing that in many cases they're a cashier because if they don't work they'll lose the house.

The thing to do here is to sell the house and move to a lower COL area, like all the HN threads that mention SF housing advise.

You and I know that to be the wiser course of action, but tell that to the lady who lived in the house for 30 years and raised her family there. Maybe a low wage job is the more appealing option to that person. But that all assumes rational actors to begin with.

Or for that matter, tell that to the person who already lives in Bumphuck, IN. My wife has high school friends in situations like that. There is no cheaper place to live, but that mortgage still needs to be paid.