Millennials vs. boomers: You twerps owe us everything

Millennials vs. boomers: You twerps owe us everything

Steve Israel
Times Herald Record
Sept. 12, 2010

Let's get one thing straight, all of you millennials out there.

If it weren't for us baby boomers, most of you wouldn't be here. Literally.

We are your parents. You sprung from our wombs, from our love.

We don't just deserve your respect; we deserve your eternal gratitude — for the food you ate, for the clothes you wore, for the roofs over your heads. By the way, we're still giving food, clothes and roofs to the more than 10 million of you who still live in our homes.

And what have you millennials — the 50 million Americans born between 1980 and 1995 who are becoming adults at the start of this new millennium — given us?

Nada — except the smug expectation that we should give you more.

How ungrateful can you be? Just look at all we've blessed you with.

Let's start with culture — like the music you listen to, on the gizmos we boomers invented.

Not only are Bruce Springsteen, Stevie Wonder, James Taylor, U2 and the late Michael Jackson bona fide, card carrying boomers born between 1946 and 1964. The music we boomers grew up on — the Beatles, the Stones, Dylan, Hendrix, Motown and James Brown — is the music you listen to now, because you hardly have any of your own.

Unless, of course, you count Lady Gaga.

How about TV?

We gave you everything from "Seinfeld" (himself a boomer) to "The Simpsons" (Homer and Marge? Boomer. Boomer.) Why, we boomers even gave you your MTV.

But it's not just pop culture that we gave you.

We gave you the civil rights movement, which produced the first African-American president.

We gave you technology like cell phones.

And did you ever hear of this little invention called the Internet?

Yup. Boomers (not including Al Gore) gave you that, too.

And now that we're starting to retire, we'll even be giving you the jobs we're leaving behind — if you can ever get out of our homes to apply for them.

The amazing thing is, after all we've given you, we've never asked for anything in return.

Except now.

Today, as we grow older and grayer ever so gracefully, all we want is a little respect — and the services, like Social Security — that we deserve. They're services we've been paying for every day of our long and productive lives.

After all we've given you — our flesh and blood — is that too much to ask?

To show what big hearts we have, we'll even give you one more thing as we prepare to head to that big boomer be-in in the sky:

A new name for your generation, besides that lame one, millennials.

You just have to give our aging, graying brains a little more time to think of one.

But you know what? I don't even want that "Social Security"...

I plan to work until I die, or die trying. And I would rather die than go on social security. Yes, I have been contributing to it since I started working over 4 decades ago... but I did not contribute willingly, and I do not approve of this program. So on principle, I am going to refuse to go on social security and will instead work to make the wherewithal I need to survive. Someone has to make the first gesture to break with the entitlement mentality that has infected society today. And I would be only too happy to be that person.

Can you even not get a SSA check? Is that an option?

Bill O'Reilly said he was going to donate his to charity when he becomes eligible.

SSA was not intended to be a "retirement" plan, much as the left makes it out to be. Does it help retired people? Yeah. But at what cost? If i die tomorrow, nobody gets the money i paid in all these years. No one. If i was married, yes. Otherwise, if i croak tomorrow, the fed gets a free jump in revenue to send to someone else that didn't earn it. How fucking fair is that? If it was a true retirement plan, i could have the option as to who gets my money if i die.

TexasBlue wrote:Can you even not get a SSA check? Is that an option?

Bill O'Reilly said he was going to donate his to charity when he becomes eligible.

SSA was not intended to be a "retirement" plan, much as the left makes it out to be. Does it help retired people? Yeah. But at what cost? If i die tomorrow, nobody gets the money i paid in all these years. No one. If i was married, yes. Otherwise, if i croak tomorrow, the fed gets a free jump in revenue to send to someone else that didn't earn it. How fucking fair is that? If it was a true retirement plan, i could have the option as to who gets my money if i die.

Exactly! SSA is a scam in that sense. That you cannot assign an heir to that money that YOU EARNED and then gave to the government is a travesty of justice. That was YOUR money, and you should be able to direct where it goes when you die. But sadly, you cannot. SSA is yet another government rip-off. Okay if you live to collect it (but barely okay, because you could do so much better if you could invest that money yourself), and a complete loss if you are single or divorced.

And here's the kicker, FDR actually wanted SSA to be a temporary program, but of course our elected representatives (mainly Democrats) nixed that idea from the very start. And now the unfunded liabilities of the Social Security program threaten to bankrupt our nation. Yet another case of "good" intentions gone very, very wrong.

I know there's some good point to SSA. My mom had cancer last year and due to an accident from a rehab center (whom she's suing), she lost 3 of her left toes (diabetic). She's not yet 65 but she's receiving SSA disability. But the gov't put her thru a wringer to qualify (which was good to prevent fraud).

But the part that makes me angry is the things i pointed out already. The gov't makes a windfall from many people...... but also get screw when people live to be 102.