History Lesson #1: In the 80s, the Gen Xers* were supposed to be the ones willing to end SS

[Creideiki]

Of course, that was before 30 years of Reaganomics left most of us in much, much worse positions financially than our parents.

My parents didn't have the student loans I do.

My parents didn't have a Depression to live through.

My parents didn't go through 3 periods of longterm unemployment that drained all savings that they had.

My parents had unions pushing wages up.

My parents had Social Security and Medicare and funded Medicaid programs--all on the chopping block now so that the top 2%--including many of the Democratic Party leadership.

My parents had a solid Welfare program that guaranteed if not a good life, at least modest economic security.

My parents never accepted rightwing framing.

My parents center was the center. The current "center", as described by the main stream media, is far, far to the right of the "center" that they knew.

The rules were different in the late 70s and early 80s. The 21st Century is much, much closer to the 1880s. We have Robber Barons and a New Gilded Age. And it sucks as much for anyone not in the top 2% now as it did then.

So when people suggest that the Gen Xers should still be willing to end (or "weaken" or "strengthen" or "swap to a chained CPI" or whatever cow excrement term the PTB are using today) Social Security and Medicare and Medicaid (Welfare being long gone in the modern United States), remember--the rules were changed on us.

It started with "401k"s that were supposed to help us prepare (and before Wall Street Panic after Wall Street Panic reduced the 401k's of everyday people to 201k's and then 101k's and then 0k's). And there was Welfare Reform that shifted Welfare to tax rebates that led to 47% of Americans not paying income taxes and now have led to those 47% being vilified for not carrying their load rather than remembering that this is what was supposed to happen under Welfare "Reform". So now we have a "Democratic" Leadership willing to end that.

40 years of Reaganomics. Bush Sr. was truly right on one thing--Trickle Down is Voodoo Economics. Only far more evil than any actual Voudoun. We've become a harsher, meaner society because the people who were supposed to be protecting us--the "Democratic" Leadership--sold us down the river to endless wage slavery. The precious few who actually fight for the lower 98% get branded in the press as "Liberals", a smear word since 1979. And the popular culture and mainstream media lie to those who really shouldn't need to follow politics as closely as those of us who actually care and tell us that we're being "unreasonable" and "demanding" and "childish" and, get this..."disloyal".

So what do you call people who remain steadfast to the ideals of the Democratic Party ca. 1978? That's right. Now we're the "disloyal" who need to be purged. Those of us who insist that Social Security perhaps could have been ended if society had continued an upward track rather than embarking on a massive downward spiral? "Disloyal". Those of us who fight for our own survival and for those who walk with us who prefer to take care of kids and dogs and daily jobs and chores and grocery shopping? "Disloyal".

And that's the History Lesson for those who actually remember and won't lie.

[WinkyDink]

1. I don't get what Generation "(your) parents" belong to. But Boomers have only begun to collect SS;

OUR parents lived through the Depression; and the 50's saw tract houses (think: Levittown), not the now-standard 4 BR/2 1/2BA/ 2-car G seen today.

We Boomers had one car per family, one TV per family, one telephone per family, no dishwasher, and no AC (think about that).

MANY of my peers worked their way through college, in food service, "campus cops", library aides. etc. And that was in state schools.

And others? Well, 58,000 came home in a box from VietNam.

I began married life at age 23, living in an apartment, then an inner-city row-home, THEN a townhouse, and finally, when 37 (and my husband 46) in my current "standard" suburban dwelling---after working 15 years as a public-school teacher.

Nobody wants to begin post-college life in anything less than suburbia, now.

So yes, your PARENTS, who might be in their 60's, are perhaps doing well. But their first 30-35 years of life? Maybe not so cushy.

[Creideiki]

2. My parents were barely pre-Boom.

My younger aunt and uncle were Boomers--as is my oldest cousin.

My older brother and three older cousins are in the Between group, the dead zone between the Boom and Gen X. I'm about as old as someone can get and be Gen X.

My parents worked their asses off for their entire working lives and at 65 needed to retire. However, their retirement plan hinges on Social Security, as does now, mine. If it's sacrificed on the Altar of Political Expedience, then I may just have the fortitude to by a tent and camp out across the street from wherever the Current "Democratic" Leadership chooses to live once out of office.

[glowing]

7. The reason many have 2 cars now is because 2 adults must work and

most public transportation sucks. And not all people have a 4 bedroom home. I lived in apts for 10yrs, before we bought our 2bedroom/ 1 bath home.

Technology allows us to have cell phones as our home phones; and with the jobs we work today, we pretty much have to be available at a whim... as well, if everyone is out of the home all day long, if your child becomes ill at school, that's the way you are contacted. Not all homes have ac. I live in FL, so its standard and needed in this place or people would be dropping like flies. My parents home in VT, NO AC. I suppose people don't really need dishwashers, however, mine came with my home purchase.. and it is run about once maybe twice a week.

I'm not sure when you were in school what the cost was? Its increased even more since I've been out for about 10yrs. I did work a job outside of school. The school jobs paid worse and had many limited hours. My 32-40hr work week outside of college maintained the cost of an off campus apt shared with a roommate (it was cheaper than staying on campus and paying that fee), bills, and part of college tuition, however, that was a very small part of being able to pay into the cost of college. I had help from my parents and still walked away with $14,000.00 in loans. And I was lucky because I had help from my parents. The total would have been much higher had I not had their help. Unless you are part of the 2%, there is no way a person going to college is not going to walk away from a 4yr college without debts to repay. Its unaffordable even for the state schools and universities. And most of my friends worked some type of job. It was unusual for a college kid not to work.. I'm not sure if that's true today. The college kids I know do have to work; at least in the summer and winter break... and due to the economic times, its harder for them to pick up a summer job because they are now competing with their parents for the same Target job.

Different times, different struggles.. Same premise though, the wealthy always want more and try to divide and conquer the larger population so that their money, power, wealth and opportunities maintain privelleges and status within a lifestyle that they don't want to share... because then they aren't special and the world would be unable to allow 7billion people to live that type of lifestyle from an environmental standpoint. Its a big game to them; pushing around pawns on a chess board.

[WinkyDink]

38. "Both parents must work." Both my parents worked in the 50's, too. Steel company and waitress.

[Pithlet]

9. "Nobody wants to begin post-college life in anything less than suburbia, now."

There are two types that buy that baloney. People who've generally fallen for a lot of the other generation divide memes, and so just naturally buy that one too. And then those who are affluent and are surrounded by it, and so just assume that everyone lives that way.

[WinkyDink]

36. What's your "it" here? Is this observation incorrect?

[Pithlet]

39. Yes, it's incorrect n/t

[DesertFlower]

24. i'm not a boomer but my husband is.

i'm almost 70. he's almost 64, but i consider myself a boomer.

my parents did live through the depression. my dad served in WWII. we lived in a 4 room (railrood rooms) cold water flat apartment until '53 when my parents put $500 down on a $10,000 house on L.I. it had only 2 bedrooms and 1 bathroom.

we didn't buy our first house till i was 48 and that was when we moved to phoenix. and yes, it was a 4 bedroom, 3 bath and loft on 1/2 acre. big difference from our 2 bedroom, bath and 1/2 in a building with 105 apartments. we also had a swimming pool and spa. all for $164,000. it was a down housing market in '89.

i think we're the last of the american dream. hubby will get a nice pension. the company changed to a 401k but he had enough years with the company to stay under the old pension plan.

[LeftyMom]

28. Okay, I'm going to take this line by line.

Tract houses are still standard today. I don't know where the hell you live but four bedroom homes are not "standard" here, nor were they except perhaps for a few years of new construction at the height of the boom, and then only in outer suburbs.

One car per family was at one point the norm because ONLY ONE PARENT WORKED in two parent homes. And schools had bus systems that brought kids to/from somewhere in shouting distance of home FOR FREE. Neither is true anymore in many cases. Technological improvements made phones cheaper and more ubiquitous, which is great because many of us have no leisure time to be home and thus could never answer that one phone.

Working one's way through college with no debt is impossible now, not least of all because so many people are out of work that many colleges don't have enough work-study jobs for applicants, and of course college costs are THROUGH THE FUCKING ROOF. When boomers were in college state schools in California were cheap (UC/CSU) or free (community college.) Students now pay more for a semester's worth of textbooks than students then paid for a semester's tuition. And we have it easy out here in California compared to college costs in most places.

Young people today are dying in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Good for you.

Actually, young people really don't want to live in suburbia. It's expensive. It's boring. The price of gas will fucking kill you, if the commute itself doesn't. You'd know this if you asked anybody under 35 instead of bitching about how hard boomers had it, having to hand wash the dishes and all.

[WinkyDink]

37. Wow. First of all, "Boomers " didn't do the dish-washing; we were CHILDREN then. The OP is the one

saying HOW EASY HIS PARENTS HAD IT, WHAT WITH WELFARE AND ALL.

I'M ONLY POINTING OUT THE REALITY OF THE 1950'S. SORRY.

And BOTH my parents worked, not just my father (Bethlehem Steel). Eastern PA. Google. Check the housing.

If you don't think that multiple TV's, phones, cars, garages, etc. are more expectations today than they were in the 1950's, then I think you are the one who is not observing reality.

[Name removed]

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[Brickbat]

4. Wait, wait -- whoa whoa whoa here, who's saying GenXers are supposed to be willing to end SS?

Because this GenXer would beg to differ.

[Creideiki]

5. Once upon a time we were supposed to.

http://www.military.com/money/content/retirement/second-retirement/social-security-and-pension-plans.html

http://www.insurancenetworking.com/news/insurance_retirement_savings-28224-1.html

http://www.emaxhealth.com/49/5819.html

All in line with what was commonly reported in the 80s.

[myrna minx]

8. I'm Gen-X and don't you agree that since 1980, we've been told not expect Social Security?

This has been the RW meme for 30 years.

[Brickbat]

16. OK, yes, totally agree. I thought it meant that GenXers were OK with ending it and were making the

push to do so.

[myrna minx]

22. They began the conditioning of lowered expectations for our generation

right after Reagan. They needed to reprogram us since the commies - both Mr Rogers and Sesame Street - taught us to share, imagine, dream and care for others even if they were different from us. :D

[reformist2]

20. Not true. That kind of talk didn't start until the 1990s.

It wasn't until the Gingrich types took over the Repug party that this pessimistic "lowered expectations" rhetoric took over.

[Creideiki]

21. Nope. I was in high school in the mid 80s

Like I said, I'm among the very first of the Xers.

We covered this several times in our Debate Club with sources ranging from Time to Newsweek to the Wall Street Journal to the New York Times. It showed up more often in Congress Debates, but we did a Lincoln-Douglas Debate on the topic also.

[reformist2]

23. I remember too. There was a debate, but then they fixed it for a generation.

The proof is in the pudding. Social Security reform was bipartisan, and the program has been going strong for almost 30 years since that reform.

[BNJMN]

14. I was told (more than once) to not expect anything for my money either. I'm mid-30s. [nt]

[alcibiades_mystery]

6. Ends and Means

A lot of people confuse them, especially when it comes to the difficult work of crafting the social good.

What is the tool, and what is the goal?

At what point does the tool become fetishized as goal?

We need to go back to basic questions, I think.

[county worker]

10. I'll tell you something. None of us were given anything. We worked for it.

I'm 65 now. My dad made $60 a week at his peek. He was a maintenance welder and that job ended up killing him. He worked at NCR for 49 years. He was in Europe in WWII for over 4 years. Before that he lived with his brother in a room above a store during the depression. They shared the soup his older brother was given at his job. My dad was unemployed as millions of men were. My two brothers and I shared one bedroom in our little 2br 1 bath house. I went to Vietnam and nearly died at 20yrs old. I worked as a waiter to pay for college because I waited too long and didn't have GI bill money. I graduated at 35 yrs old after taking part time classes at junior college then going on to university. It took 6 years.

Millions of African Americans had shittier lives than you will ever have. Married women could not get credit in their names. The Civil Rights movement and the Women's movement happened because they fought for a better life. They didn't sit on their ass and complain like you are doing.

None of us had it easy. Your problem is the idea that someone owes you something that you think others had before you. All of us are born in whatever time and have to make the best of what we can with what there is. That's life.

[Creideiki]

11. We worked for it, too.

And we deserve it, too.

That's life.

If you buy into the idea that it won't affect you so you don't care about those who come after us, then you, sirrah (term used advisably), are the problem.

PS--the Civil Rights Movement owes its success to one like me. I know history. Study up and learn something.

[Name removed]

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[BNJMN]

15. (deleted)

[1monster]

26. Yes, we all have paid into the SS and Medicare system. It is OUR money and WE ALL deserve it.

No Boomer is saying Gen Xers don't deserve it.

I'm a Boomer from the Middle. From the way things are looking, a lot of Boomers are going to get left on the curb. Gen Xers are not the only ones facing the "debt ceiling" knife. So are those in front of you and those behind you.

By making this a generational thing, YOU are playing into the hands of those who are doing this to all of us. First divide and then conquer. We need to all work together on this.

I don't understand what you mean by this

"PS--the Civil Rights Movement owes its success to one like me. I know history. Study up and learn something.'

During the height of the Civil Rights movement, I was to young to join in. By the seventies, we were into fine tuning and learning to live in an integrated world. I'm not saying that there wasn't still racism. I moved from a small northern town to a small southern town in 1974 and was flabberghasted by the amount of overt racism that still existed, but it was no longer institutionalized by law.

The ones who get the credit for the civil rights achievements in this country are those who became adults in the forties, fifties, and early sixties. The pre Boomer generation and the early Boomers.

Unless I'm totally misunderstanding your meaning, I find it very condesending for you to tell those who lived through the civil rights movement "study up and learn something" about their growing up years.

On more thing: I haven't seen any DU Boomers suggesting that he/she didn't care about those who come after us not getting SS. Quite the opposite. That kind of talk is straight from the GOP talking points.

"If you buy into the idea that it won't affect you so you don't care about those who come after us, then you, sirrah (term used advisably), are the problem."

[JoeyT]

32. It isn't hard to find. Just scroll up.

When someone says

"None of us had it easy. Your problem is the idea that someone owes you something that you think others had before you. All of us are born in whatever time and have to make the best of what we can with what there is. That's life."

in a thread where someone is complaining that their generation won't see social security, you're seeing someone say the generation after them is too lazy to deserve it.

[1monster]

34. I read the one about no one generation has had it easy. Well, that is true. If you don't

recognize that, then you are not aware of our social history. Each generation, and often different segments of generations, face their own challenges. What Tom Brokaw refers to as the Greatest Generation had the Great Depression and WWII and Korea in their youth. The Greatest Generation and the Boomers had Vietnam, assassinations, riots, racial violence in the face of civil rights movements, and the beginning of the realization realization that our government could be and was being corrupted. Those of the Greatest who were and still are with us, the Boomers, and the Gen-Xers have seen the queit dismantling of our way of life, two wars with Iraq, the Afghan War, the buying of our federal, state, and now local governments by selfish (and incredibly stupid) big money and corporate interests.

We are all in it together. We all share in what is going on now. The experiences of the youth of a period is not the end all and be all of a generation. Some of us enter and exit earlier than others. Why should that make us rivals or enemies. But we all share the events that happen while we are on life's stage.

As for the post (that I didn't see, and you didn't provide a link) that someone said Gen-Xers were lazy; well, like the poor, the stupid and/or misinformed will always be with us.

on edit a postscript: Aren't GenXers a little old for the generation gap garbage? Or, since you didn't have it in your youth, you want a go with it in your approaching middle age?

[JoeyT]

31. Yes everyone from your generation is a martyr and no generation after yours ever had to

work for anything. I know it's personally exhausting to me to have to go cash the huge checks mailed to me on a regular basis just for being alive. And we all know how complaining on the internet doesn't accomplish anything, since it automatically prevents you from doing anything else whatsoever to better your situation.

So since you think Gen Xers that are paying into social security don't deserve to collect on it, when can we expect you to publicly cancel yours? Yeah, that's exactly what I thought.

I'm not even a Gen Xer, but my god the way boomers complain about GX you'd think they were selling them off to glue factories.

[marmar]

12. K&R from this GenXer.

nt

[treestar]

17. Even under the worst scenario possible, it is not being "ended."

That would take a full Republican Congress, Senate and President and even that might not be rightward enough. It would have to be all Libertarians of the Rand Paul type.

[Creideiki]

19. The point is that it's more important than ever

It can't be "strengthened" or tied to a chained CPI.

We're relying on it more than ever. Not because we're weak and can't control ourselves, but because we've been put through a series of conservative moneyed class engineered crises leading back over 30 years. (Some would say 40, but it's clear that the last 30 have been engineered.)

Once upon a time, not that long ago, there were pensions and retirement plans. Now there are only Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. A social safety net as strong and as fragile as a spider's web.

[reformist2]

18. I'm tired of the phony generational labels - It's just more divide and conquer garbage.

[craigmatic]

25. So I take it everybody has read the fourth turning?

Howe and Strauss say that the Xers are going to lead us through this crisis by making pragmatic decisions as midlife leaders while we millenials are the hero foot soldiers in what could be an era of the next new deal. I wonder when this new glorious age will arrive.

[Creideiki]

27. Here's to hoping

I apologized to my brother-in-law last night for the awful job my generation and the ones before did to his world.

[defendandprotect]

29. Right Wing has been running anti-SS propaganda for decades ... remember

the Wall St. Journal campaign saying that SS was a "Ponzi Scheme" --

Do you recall any replies to all of that from the Democratic Party or

elected Dems?

No wonder those who pay into it were confused --

FURTHER, IN ORDER TO INCREASE THE SIZE OF THE SS SLUSH FUND FOR THE BENEFIT OF

ELITES -- FOR WARS AND TAX CUTS FOR THE RICH -- they increased the FICA tax on

the poor and middle class moving the burden of Social Security totally onto their

shoulders -- !!!

So, yes, the poor and middle class employees had a right to find FICA payments

burdensome -- it was a very heavy tax on them and unnecessary --

disguised in part as the "baby boomer" increase!!

[libmom74]

30. Gen Xer checking in

to say I will fight the cuts to Medicare/Medicaid/SSI. I do expect to get what I paid into my entire working life, the RW and "New" Democrats can spin their "reform" ideas any way they like, so far it all adds up to stealing from the working and middle class to give more to the wealthy.

[JoeyT]

33. Oh dear. You've committed the high crime

of being insufficiently deferential to the boomers. Even though you didn't actually blame them for anything, and in fact appear to be mostly blaming the so called "Greatest Generation" for how screwy things are now, you're going to get boomers raging at you for the imaginary crime of implying that they don't shit diamonds and fart gold dust. Even though it was the wealthy elite of the GG that changed the rules you're not allowed to mention boomers unless you're talking about how much they rock or some of them will have a fit and attack you, uphill in the snow both ways.

[1monster]

35. Cross Post regarding SS.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=439&topic_id=1561093&mesg_id=1562148

25. Do you know anything about how Raygun changed Social Security?

The Baby Boomers have paid for BOTH their parents' and their own Social Security. Their parents' are still collecting what the Baby Boomers pay in AND the Baby Boomer's retirement is in the Social Security Trust Fund. The Trust Fund was initially simply a mechanism to hold Social Security money for a short while and then it was sent out in payments. BUT when Raygun came along, he changed it. He doubled our Social Security payments (while capping the withholding for the rich) and the extra moneys collected went into Treasury bills held in the Social Security Trust Fund. It is currently about $3 Trillion. That is the Baby Boomers Social Security. That is the money the GOP wants to give to the Koch Brothers and Wall Street banksters.