How the Baby Boomers Destroyed America's Future | Hacker News Reader

How the Baby Boomers Destroyed America's Future

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46 pointswallflower20 comments

Obamacare "is designed to be a fiscal transfer from the young to the old, the healthy to the sick, and the rich to the poor."

Every welfare system is designed to work that way. What should it do? Transfer from the sick to the healthy, from the poor to the rich?

The real problem in my opinion comes when the transfer isn't from the rich to the poor, but from the future generations to the current ones, through debt.

Future generations are probably going to be wealthier than us, as long as we can get past our nuclear squeamishness and global warming doesn't destroy everything. Why not finance?

Because it's spending money you don't have, in hope that you will get them. That will lead to problems sooner or later.

Because the ones loaded with the debt have no say in the matter? You might as well say to your kids; welcome to involuntary indentured servitude (hint: this has another name).

Meanwhile student loan rates double tomorrow...

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/education-debt-mini...

...and the US Government is making more on student loan interest than Exxon profits.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/14/obama-student-loans...

So on the one hand we schools that cost too much and complain about that, and on the other we complain when the money from the government that enables those high costs gets more expensive - this is crazy. The only way to lower the cost of universities is to dry up the credit available to students.

Or offer good education for less, but I know that's not the American way...

Like the health care debate... lessons learned from the rest of the world is not a topic up for debate.

That is not a particularly American phenomenon, we do it all the time in Australia... however there are often calls to stop the "Americanisation" of health care/education/workplace.

Thats just because credit is so cheap that the costs can go so high. If it was much harder to borrow money, I tell you the universities would never get away with such fees.

Which again goes back to one of the article's points of cross-economy borrowing on crack that was started a few decades back and will eventually get someone to pay for it.

Yes, the current education system in America is due to a willful desire to increase the cost of college, because every American politician is a terrible person.

(One could educate oneself on the history of public college funding and the underpinning philosophies of the student loan to get a better idea of the massively complex economic situation, but I know that's not the American way...)

This article is frankly kind of silly. Just because the boomers were alive and working during all these trends doesn't mean that they were responsible for them.

While Motley Fool articles are generally light, and this one only lightly connects the trends to its conclusion, it's not that big of a leap to complete the conclusion.

Assuming everyone agrees that we want standards of living and the economy to improve over time (should probably go without saying), then the fact that the article outlines how this has not happened or has not happened to the extent that it could have over a period of time, and the future projections are pessimistic, means that some previous generation failed to improve the situation for the following generations. Considering the boomers were the generation working and aging at a time when these trends were occurring (from the article: decreasing household income, increase in debt), then the evidence is pretty strong the they are responsible.

It's possible the cause of the trends stems from something or someone more specific than an entire generation of people. But if the generation before them was too old, and the one after them too young, to have influenced these trends, and the effects are too broad to have been caused by a specific subset of Boomers, then it's understandable how a conclusion like "Baby Boomers Destroyed America's Future" is reached.

Are you asserting that a generation of people alive and working during a certain period have no effect on most socioeconomic trends of their time?

Explain how.

Run-of-the-mill outrage article that has nothing to do with Hacker News, flagged.

I'll tell you the issue: politics, banks, speculation and capitalism.

Politics: For not being good enough to fix the issues we have.

Banks: For making money out of nothing: someone has to pay this. And the house credit scandal, creating the current crisis.

Speculation/Wall-street: Again making money out of little added value: someone has to pay this.

Capitalism: If money makes money, someone has to pay this, and the someone is the 99% !

Deleted comment

Dow Jones data for 2000 - 2013 was directly below the graph you referenced. And in fact, a kind of important point the author made in the text...

not only in USA

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