David M. Walker, former U.S. comptroller general, who headed the Government Accountability Office from 1998-2008, now CEO of the Comeback America Initiative, is one of the few who understands the numbers at hand.
See: The fight for a grand bargain.
“Ideologues and special interests on the left and right are marshaling forces to crush all efforts to achieve a reasoned fiscal compromise. We are about to discover if our elected representatives are leaders or minions.
Each party has its sacred cow, untouchable in previous negotiations. For the Republicans, it is their insistence on no tax increases; for the Democrats it is a refusal to consider cuts to social insurance programs.
Both positions are irresponsible — because we cannot address our structural deficits and mounting debt burdens without additional tax revenues and reform of existing social insurance programs. After all, total federal liabilities, unfunded promises for Medicare and Social Security, and other commitments are more than $71 trillion and growing by about $100 billion a week.”
It is also critical to understand that there are some 10,000 people turning 65 in America each day now. In many ways the budget fight at hand is not between the left and the right, but between the old and the young. Boomers on both sides want their tax savings and all of their social benefits too. Meanwhile this is a generation who have eaten their cake for years now, indulging their wants while setting aside very little for the future. Their expectations are simply crushing the financial viability of the nation. Now milked dry, it is time to feed the cow.
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Yessir its true the aging boomers got the low-hanging fruit AFTER their parents got theirs FIRST. Now it gets interesting.
Meanwhile INDIA’s baby-boomers are now entering the work force just like ours did in 1980-82 and is expected to run until they age in 2042. I own HDB and IBN, the two largest banks in INDIA. Just look at the charts breakout.
Like Mr. Carney, I guess his timing was also pretty good, “1998 – 2008.”
“Boomers on both sides want their tax savings and all of their social benefits too. Meanwhile this is a generation who have eaten their cake for years now, indulging their wants while setting aside very little for the future. Their expectations are simply crushing the financial viability of the nation.”
This is a very simplistic approach to a very compex problem and somewhat unfair.
If a farmer puts a cow in a field of clover, which in excess volume is extremely toxic, the cow will eat until it bloats and dies or until the farmer notices the bloating and comes along and punches a hole in the stomach to release the gas. Do you blame the cow or the farmer?
Cows instinctively herd together and generally travel in which ever direction they are encouraged to go. Boomers are no different. They are the cows of the Plutocracy. Without a doubt Edward Bernay’s is smiling from his grave.
The seed was sown we are witnessing the results.
The economic issues will eventuallywork themselves out.
Always, the masses are encouraged/led to focus their attention away from the more important issues.
Try to overlook the ignorance of the puppet doing the interview and try to concentate on the message being delivered here.
http://cnnpressroom.blogs.cnn.com/2012/11/28/erin-burnett-talks-to-wikileaks-founder-julian-assange/
I’m one of the 10,000 a day retiring Boomers as of last week.
“David M. Walker, former U.S. comptroller general, who headed the Government Accountability Office from 1998-2008, now CEO of the Comeback America Initiative, is one of the few who understands the numbers at hand.”
Apparently like a lot of bureaucrats and elected leaders he didn’t do a very good job and is now going to try to blame baby boomers for our economic woes caused by criminal acts of bureaucrats like him and criminal acts of our elected leaders that allowed the mess to get to this point. The only thing baby boomers did was to go to work each day for the past 40 years, put a little away in a 401K (because corporations bribed congress so they could get out of their responsibilty to provide pensions), had that stolen by crash after crash after crash in the stock market – all that while the criminal scum in congress spent their payroll tax contributions to pay for useless pork, corporate welfare, and welfare for minorities and white trash. If that true account of this problem offends you, tough, history does that sometimes.
The tripe about unfunded liabilities is laughable. The only program that has any funding at all is Social Security because it has a specific tax to support it – and that tax must be raised to keep it solvent. ALL OTHER GOVERNMENT EXPENDITURES are unfunded, thus the unfunded government expenditures is unlimited – it is infinite. That’s right – infinite dollars. Unfunded liabilities my ass – here’s one for you- if you are 30 and expect to live to 90 -and drink a $5 starbutt coffee each day, THE UNFUNDED LIABILITY FOR YOUR COFFEE IS $109,500!!! IT’S THE END OF THE WORLD!!! YOU ARE BANKRUPT!!!! THE SKY IS FALLING, THE SKY IS FALLING!!!!
ROFLMFAO!!!!!!!