Baby Boomers: We had it all, and still do. | Hacker News Reader

Baby Boomers: We had it all, and still do.

theglobeandmail.com

76 pointsbishnu50 comments

There's a much more substantial article in esquire about this:

http://www.esquire.com/print-this/young-people-in-the-recess...

It was submitted recently but didn't make the front page.

If I think about this stuff too much, it makes me want to burn things.

It's going to come back to bite the boomers in twenty years when the youth feel absolutely no obligation to support them. I and a lot of my peers are planning to leave our home countries specifically so we don't have to spend a single penny supporting the twilight indolence of that morally vacuous cohort who literally ruined the world for their benefit, after spending their youths supposedly saving it, and their middle ages talking endlessly about how great they are for having done so, all while they carved chunks out of their children's future.

Honest question: how have they ruined the world? I understand what baby boomers are, but I don't see how their actions have ruined everything! Was it their action or inaction? Are you referring to a specific subset of them?

I was referring primarily to the wanton exploitation of finite natural resources without regard for the consequences: they know that there will be no consequences because they will be dead.

Then there was the entrenchment of the cult of the market into every corner of human thought, the sacrifice of compassion on the altar of misread darwinism and thermonuclear psychosis which now dictates every aspect of existence as a matter of presumed necessity. The deliberate development and adoption of a pseudomathematical framework to justify and rationalise absolute contempt for one's fellow man. Nothing short of the death of enlightenment ideals.

I freely admit that I cannot rigorously justify every aspect of my views in the manner that HN usually demands, but IMO pretty much anything that happened in the world during the period of time that the boomers had/have geopolitical, financial and cultural power is fair game to blame them for to some extent.

TBH I'm just trying to express how I feel when I think about my future and that of my friends. This probably isn't the best place for it, and so I'll leave it here before I say anything even more ill-thought-out.

I was referring primarily to the wanton exploitation of finite natural resources without regard for the consequences

If that's what you're worried about, the boomers may have been less irresponsible than previous generations, given the technology available to them. A few millennia ago, people were eradicating mammal species with stone tools.

You are right, and there are many ways in which the world has objectively shown uninterrupted progress throughout history. Murder/violence have apparently been steadily decreasing since biblical times[1]. The same probably goes for other things, like prejudice and freedom of expression.

Also there is the important point that problems like environmental harm seem more acute now only because we are more aware of them. During the industrial revolution, the extent of the harm caused by the use of fossil fuels wasn't a consideration to anyone because we couldn't even conceive what it would mean. Ignorance is bliss.

Unfortunately, all of this is cold comfort when you have dark thoughts of widespread conflict over fresh water in your future.

[1] http://www.ted.com/talks/steven_pinker_on_the_myth_of_violen...

That's good food for thought; whaling is perhaps another good example. But previous generations had less capability to exhaust nonrenewable resources than more modern ones, and the side effects of killing all the Syrian Elephants might be less harmful than the side effects of blowing the tops off of mountains.

Similarly: most species extinctions seem either to have occurred BCE or after the industrial era. The older extinctions caused by people who knew less about the impact of their (for instance) hunting, which makes them less morally culpable.

Honest question: how have they ruined the world?

No. Most of them are in "the 99%", and the fact that the upper class of our society is extremely parasitic has nothing to do with generations. Look at the elite of the U.S., and you'll find that the kids are shittier than the parents, and the grandparents often are fairly normal people who are disgusted by the shit their youngers pulled.

I wish it wasn't this way, and that there was a single person one could blame it on, but the decay of the U.S. starting in the late 1970s was a product of impersonal historical forces. It's not about Reagan or Thatcher or Boomers or oil prices or Yuppies or Wall Street. People matter but personalities don't. Rather, post-FDR America did such a good job of eradicating the parasitic elite that people started to romanticize it and want it back (assuming, of course, that they'd have a good chance of entering it; in reality, they had no chance).

With New Deal-esque social regulations and the dismantling of them after 1980, it's much like the anti-vaccine movement. Vaccines worked so well that people forgot why they needed them.

Your well reasoned and nuanced comment has no place on HN. :-)

I'll try since I disagree with JonnieCache.

They allowed decades of undeclared wars. They allowed decades of military-industrial complex buildup. They allowed business and government to become more intertwined than ever before. (This is where I disagree with JonnieCache, I believe that cronyism and corruption have caused all the issues he mentioned, not free-market capitalism)

They allowed the constant inflation of their money because it appeared that they were getting richer, when in reality it was shrinking what little savings they had and absolutely destroyed the savings of their retired parents generation.

Now we are left with a debased currency that has the potential to become worthless within our lifetimes. We are left paying the interest on the consumption loans they took out to fuel their lifestyle.

>(This is where I disagree with JonnieCache, I believe that cronyism and corruption have caused all the issues he mentioned, not free-market capitalism)

Just to clarify: I don't have anything against free markets in abstract, just in the dogmatic application of market ideas.

The notion that always acting in ones self interest is optimal for society always justifies anything and everything, leading inevitably to cronyism, corruption, whatever. "Free" seems to mean "allowed to do whatever you want" as far as I can tell.

Hmmmm. I should really be venting this somewhere else. Sorry people.

Inflation is hardly a characteristic of the boomer years. We've had persistant inflation since 1914, went we went to a fiat money system.

> . I and a lot of my peers are planning to leave our home countries specifically so we don't have to spend a single penny supporting...

I have a friend who's planning on doing exactly that. If the US ever stopped taxing income earned by US citizens living in foreign countries, the number of expatriates flocking to Scandanavia, England, and the Netherlands would be astounding. You'd get the best of both worlds.

The problem is that the people complaining when their benefits are cut are often the same ones complaining that our tax rate is 'too high' compared to the 92% (!) marginal tax rate during Eisenhower's administration. But of course, that's around the time that the baby boomers were born, so they don't remember that.

"Scandanavia, England, and the Netherlands"

I guess if your idea of paying 60%+ taxes is "the best of both worlds", then by all means do it.

"The problem is that the people complaining when their benefits are cut are often the same ones complaining that our tax rate is 'too high' compared to the 92% (!) marginal tax rate during Eisenhower's administration. But of course, that's around the time that the baby boomers were born, so they don't remember that."

Should we also talk about the state of women's rights or minorities during that time? Oh yeah, and stop complaining.

92% marginal tax rate was wrong then..and it's wrong now.

1. "stop complaining" is the best advice to give to someone who wants to ruin a democratic country.

2. "state of women's rights or minorities": Please don't embarrass yourself by giving said advice after waving around a huge red herring to distract from an enormous, subtly woven social problem that touches every part of modern society.

You're somehow suggesting that because policy on rights for women and minorities was poor, the taxation system used at the time was also wrong. Beyond attaching your claim that high tax is wrong to the universally accepted claim that institutionalised racism and sexism is wrong, you give no real justification for what you're saying.

Perhaps the smallest income disparity ever seen in modern society occurred during that period of high taxation. The gradual erosion of high tax rates (similar levels occurred in the UK around the same time) is almost certainly due to pressure from the wealthy. Tax is a great leveller, providing an underlying safety net for the most vulnerable or the most unfortunate in society, and limiting the self awarded incomes of those at the tops of companies.

While I wouldn't argue for taxation rates to be increased to those levels, I really struggle to understand how the erosion of tax rates is in any way beneficial to the vast majority of people. Assuming the target of society is to have some level of equality across it's population, tax reduction is simply wrong. The actions of politicians working to reduce tax are clearly driven by the interests of those already wealthy enough to have a voice.

The target of society is not equality, per se, but a high minimum standard of living. pg has a great essay on this at http://paulgraham.com/gap.html. As a quick summary: as technology increases and multiplies people's abilities to be productive, we would expect the income gap to widen; someone 10x-50x as productive as someone else should be compensated accordingly. Conversely, if the marginal tax rate is 92% above 100k income, people will seek other forms of compensation in their work - for example, shorter hours. No one is going to put in 100 hour weeks to earn $300k a year, because after taxes that comes out to an extra $27k; I'll relax at a 9-5 instead and just earn my government mandated salary cap.

That essay is really rather interesting and makes some great points. I do think that it misses some important areas though. Given that it was written in 2004, I'll give Paul Graham the benefit of the doubt. Most of my points have only really surfaced in the last few years.

1. He states at one point that "It's absolute poverty you want to avoid, not relative poverty.", which is certainly true to an extent, but not completely. A recent BBC documentary looked at some of the poorest people in America.[1] The thing that really struck me about that is that these people, in absolute terms, are not poverty stricken. They're not short of shelter, food or water. In relative terms though, they've been left behind. The modern american society simply isn't designed for people living on their income level. They live in motels without kitchens, so the option of cooking the basic staple foods eaten by those on similar income levels elsewhere is unavailable to them. They have to buy expensive packaged foods. The high cost of the society they live in means that their disposable income, and their ability to climb out of the economic hole that they're in, is almost certainly less than that of people with their absolute income in a poorer society. Poverty has to be considered in both relative and absolute terms. The people depicted in that documentary have fewer options available to them than those in poor countries. American health costs, education costs and rents are all designed for the average American income level.

[1]: http://www.bbc.co.uk/panorama/hi/front_page/newsid_9694000/9...

2. There are aspects of society that set their own value. I know it's popular to complain about bankers right now, but they're probably the best example of this. Banking a necessary evil to allow us to deal with the vast, money based economy we've created. While almost every other industry operates by trading goods or non-monetary services for money (and so only sees money that's in some way related to their business expenses), banking sees all the money. A "normal" business can increase profits by maintaining or increasing income and reducing expenses (eg outsourcing, manufacturing in China, reducing material costs). Banks, by virtue of their operation, handle incredible amounts of money. They're in a unique situation that allows them to set the value of the service they provide. Not surprisingly, that service value is set considerably higher than perhaps it truly is.

It's obviously hard to place a value on the services provided by banks. In his essay, Paul Graham talks about wealth creation, giving a farmer as an example. The banking (and financial trading system) is not primarily a wealth creator. It's a system for moving that created wealth around. Banking can enable wealth creation with funding, but the system we have today has developed to reward activities with high returns over short periods. What I'd argue as true human wealth creation - manufacturing and valuable service provision - doesn't provide the returns that the banking system was looking for. The house of cards built up by high frequency trading, derivatives, futures and other hugely abstracted banking and trading concepts is far removed from this wealth creation.

Society rewards bankers with large amounts of money. Paul Graham argues that Steve Jobs increases material wealth, and so his monetary wealth in return was deserved. That's almost certainly true, but banking isn't a case of the average person going out and buying an iPad because it increases their material wealth. Bankers are rewarded richly because they've constructed a system over the last hundred years which takes large rewards for itself. There is very little true wealth produced by the system.

That essay was however written during the good times. In 2004 none of us were aware of just what a damaged financial system our economies are based on. In 2004 the families featured in that BBC documentary had a house with a hot tub. While I agree that there needs to be an incentive for productive working, there also needs to be a safety net. In our technology driven society, people shouldn't be struggling hard just to stay under a roof and feed their children. History has shown that the rich are the ones who have a voice, and so craft the system to benefit them.

A recent study of the Tea Party [1] found that most grassroots members didn't oppose benefits (SS, Medicare, etc.) to people like themselves, just to "freeloaders" like young or poor people:

"Older, middle-class Tea Partiers mostly approve of Social Security, Medicare, and generous benefits for military veterans. Their opposition to “big government” entails reluctance to pay taxes to help people viewed as undeserving “freeloaders” – including immigrants, lower income earners, and the young." [2]

[1] http://harvardmagazine.com/2012/01/tea-party-passions [2] understandingtheteaparty.com/Book

(I'm not a tax attorney) Most of those countries have double taxation agreements with the US. You can take a credit or deduction for taxes paid.

In general, if you're a US citizen, you pay the maximum of US or foreign taxes. Usually you end up paying mainly foreign tax, since most (worthwhile to live in) countries tax individual income higher than the USA does. There's also a ~95k income exemption if you're out of the USA.

If you move to a zero or low income tax place, then the global taxing power of the US becomes relevant. Still, you don't pay higher taxes than if you remained in the USA.

Taxes probably shouldn't be a major factor for a US citizen in deciding to expatriate. If you want to live in Sweden more than the US, and can get a job, go for it. You don't have to go forever. I think the only issue is that you might not end up paying enough Social Security tax to the US to earn the maximum amount, but for someone paid like a tech worker, not an issue.

The other thing is if you move to a place with lower cost of living, you might have lower wages for the same quality of life, which means lower taxes paid (in absolute rate, and in progressive tax tier).

I don't think there's a better place to do a tech startup than Silicon Valley now, but if you want to do a wind or solar energy startup, moving to Germany might make sense. If you want to go SCUBA diving a lot, move to Malaysia or Australia and put up with worse jobs.

Taxes really shouldn't be the primary reason why you do anything.

What if the low tax country had low tax because it had low government spending on benefits, etc. You'd still have to pay US tax rates for little benefit.

You would still have the us foreign exclusion, at least. But most of the low tax places are not places I'd want to live (which is sad, as a libertarian); I've lived in several of them. Hong Kong is the sole exception, and there the benefits (at least roads, security, etc) are superior to the USA, due to high density and efficiency and a long period of good governance.

(also, most of the benefits of living in a high tax high service economy are not really delivered by the US government now, even given moderately high taxes. Defense spending is not particularly improving my quality of life, and to the extent it does, it is a global value which taxpayers in Japan benefit from as well. I'm not sure why the US Government and California are relatively less efficient at delivering worthwhile services than other governments around the world.)

Singapore is also another developed low tax country.

"The problem is that the people complaining when their benefits are cut are often the same ones complaining that our tax rate is 'too high'"

That is because it is.

"compared to the 92% (!) marginal tax rate during Eisenhower's administration."

Compared with a 92% marginal tax rate everything seems low, but that was not a "tax", it was a commandeering in times of war.

I think that is the reason governments love wars so much, you can steal all the people's property and have people feeling thankful for not being dead.

Wow this article couldn't miss the point by a wider margin if it tried.

Unionization reinforces seniority hierarchy, which hurts young people. The current social security and medicare system reinforces a young-funds-old mentality, which hurts young people. The higher education system, which has been bloated after years of public subsidy, requires normal people to take on debt, which hurts young people. Deficit spending leads to future taxation, which hurts young people.

Conservative, free-market types have been saying all of this for well over 30 years. Government support of inefficient institutions causes them to become more expensive and even more inefficient, and the after a while everyone becomes dependent on the support. But when everyone is dependent on government support, then there's no one paying for the support, and the whole system comes crashing down. And here we are in 2012, watching it happen in higher education, in health care, in housing, and in state and local governments all around the country.

What exactly is the author proposing as a solution; some sort of uber-occupy-wall-street movement that will flip over cars and demand a new wave of the sorts demonstrably unsustainable institutions we have now? These industries are BEGGING to be liberalized (in the original sense of the word). Ron Paul is a bit of a lunatic, but a path forward that truly expands opportunities for young people is going to look a lot more like a Paul-ian utopia than a left-ist one.

America has been exclusively electing irresponsible assholes to public office for the last 60 years though. It is the last nation you would want to hold up as an example for anything, no matter what your agenda, left or right.

There are plenty of great public education, public health, and public pension systems implemented in the world. That none of them are in the US has nothing to do with the idea of it, but rather who was in charge of getting it done (i.e. ultimately, the American population itself).

There seems to be a lack of intelligent conversation on this subject, but this article (despite not being very substantial) hit upon one of my pet peeves, so I'll give it a go.

Western society, or at least North American society, has long been set up to the benefit of the boomer generation. That is not terribly surprising as they make up the largest single group. I don't blame them individually or collectively. It is, after all, my parents generation. The real issue, to my mind, is that they still occupy the top positions they they have been occupying since their 20s and 30s. This point of view may not get much sympathy on a forum dedicated to entrepreneurial pursuit, but I feel I have been seriously disadvantaged in my career as there is still a glut of boomers occupying the middle and upper rungs. I have a good job, but it is a limited term position, and I am still at the bottom of the totem pole. I am in my 30s, but I am still considered and treated like a "young person." When is it my turn?

This is, of course, part of the reason that I lurk on HN, and that I consider launching a start-up almost on a daily basis.

I find it strange to reconcile this position with the other oft-repeated position that people over 50 cannot get hired.

At the moment, people under 50 can't get hired either.

You might find this supports your argument: http://www.amazon.com/Please-Just-Off-Its-Turn/dp/1864033282

My partner complained about this as a CTO of an investment company. Dealing with OTHER COMPANIES had them trying to marginalize him because he couldn't possibly be skilled enough. His own boss was often told to replace him by his peers, because he wasn't "Senior" enough to hold the position.

Not sure if this was sarcastic or not, but the words are true. Boomers had it and continue to. Whats left for the younger generation is a world of fear and terror, where standing outside of the yellow marked line can and most likely will castrate you.

Where did you notice any sarcasm? The numbers and facts mostly speak for themselves.

Sounds jolly. I guess the best thing to do in this future hellworld is invest in some yellow road paint and a pair of shiny metal underpants. Will there still be ice cream?

I hope the baby boomers realize that the 20 somethings out there don't give a damn about their entitlements and we'll pick up and move to Africa if we have to because all we need is a solid internet connection.

Simple fix in two steps. 1. Delink entitlement with inflation. 2. Inflate away.

Non-working Boomers with fixed incomes will lose due to inflation. Working late comers will have their earning raised with inflation.

What a cruel and cynical recommendation! Who cares if Canadian health care costs spike for a number of years as the population gets older and baby boomers require treatment. This the point of having health care.

The source of the bitterness many feel towards the baby boomer generation is the perception (rightly or wrongly) that the group as a whole advocates politically hypocritical policies -- not because anyone sane wishes ill of the weak or poor or infirm.

Who had stopped the Boomers when they looted the later generations with their oversized entitlement? The later generations are just trying to get things back to order. There ain't no free lunch.

Looted? If you want to argue from a position of fiscal soundness you will have to do much better than suggest Canada adopt the US approach to health care, which provides less coverage at significantly higher rates. Or advocate the intentional debasement of a currency as measure of fiscal sanity. Your proposal leaves the poor much worse off and the rich paying considerably more for health care. The difference in costs buys a lot of lunch.

This kind of thing will continue in any government system wherein the current body can borrow large sums of money now to pay for perk's now with little to no consequences now. Eventually someone pays the price but the bet is that someone will be around when the current beneficiary isn't.

That might be a problem for the NEXT generation, but paying back government debt isn't what is driving the numbers in these articles.

(Compared to the protest movement of the Sixties, the Occupy movement is a toothless tiger.)

Maybe that's because the Occupy protesters have seen the videos of what happened in more extreme cases to the 60s protesters (not to mention advances in crowd control techniques, like microwave guns, pepper spray, and using LRAD at close range).

It will be fun getting entitlement changes through with this age distribution:

http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/info-CONGRE...

There's a good book about this:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Pinch-Boomers-Childrens-Future/d...

... by a serving UK cabinet minister (so I guess it didn't do a lot of good).

Did she forget Vietnam?

Speaking from outside North America: We're hoarding popcorn right now to see if you can figure out this one.

(however I've heard some west europe countries are sharing the milder form of the same disease)

China is going to have plenty of demographic issues of its own. One-child led to a demographic bulge.

Other countries with huge youth populations (Egypt, Iran, Oman) seem to have difficulty with it due to lack of productive economic activity for them, too.

It seems as though many non-North American countries have much in common with Canada, especially in health care. Why do you think that this article only applies to North America?

Well, at the moment it doesn't seem to apply to where I live (Russia) - the set of problems is just so different. Not that there are many good things going on here, but anyway:

We have an unique, first time in a few centuries, moment when we can sit in the back row and enjoy the entertainment.

You can have the entitlements, we have a chance to change the world. For all the hippy protests, and idealism, and futurism, that generation did SQUAT.

The problem is how much it'll cost us to pay for those entitlements.

The way the baby boomer generation has raped our society of wealth by piling on debt to be paid by future generations is an abomination. To me, it is concrete proof that democracy doesn't work. How is it possible make things fair in a popularity contest when you're outnumbered?

I honestly don't know why everyone under the age of 30 isn't rioting and burning down the system right now. They got dealt a shit hand.

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