> Ian Murray wrote:
>
> >This could be due to the notion common among young people that the
> >Gov. is a badly run $1.8 trillion corporation that co-ordinates the
> >transfer of wealth for rich folks and their corporations while
> >treating the rest of us like 12 year olds and, well, proletarians.
DH>>
> And this is a view uncommon among boomers?
===== Doubt it.
> > Now
> >the boomers are worried about social security--go figure-
DH>>
> It seems more salient as an issue as you approach 50 than when
you're
> merely approaching 30.
======
Ok.
> > while the
> >Feds spend $7 on seniors for every $1 they spend on kids and youth
>
> Is this drawn from the Mike Males generational warfare playbook?
What
> is the point of a comparison like this, if not to imply that we
> "overspend" on seniors? Social Security is one of the few aspects of
> the U.S. welfare state that isn't a total disgrace, and Medicare's
> pretty good too. Should we bring that $7 down to $5 just for
> generational equity?
=============
Who's Mike Males? I was merely stating a fact, you made the inference.
You also seem to imply a zero-sum game with that aspect of the public
purse. Why would spending on seniors have to go down in order for
investments in youth to go up? It doesn't follow. How 'bout less
imperial armaments, less dubious contracts and subsidies to the
corps., repeal of drug laws etc. Social Security is a damn fine model
of administrative competence in the face of staggering complexity.
Imagine the Pentagon operating as efficiently. Medicare/Medicaid could
use some internal improvements, especially with their IT systems in
order to deliver more value to the citizens who currently benefit from
their existence as well as future beneficiaries.
DH>>
> As I recall, Frank Luntz's famous survey, in which he found more Gen
> Xers believing in UFOs than in their ever getting a SS check, also
> found they *wanted* SS to remain intact, though Luntz never bothered
> to report that.
===========
Please don't tell me you're suprised by that.
> > [we
> >won't go into whether that includes enforcing the drug laws etc.]
at
> >the same time they refuse to acknowledge that the Gov. has
investment
> >policies, technology policies, housing policies, moral
indoctrination
> >policies, the list goes on, that act in contradictory ways that let
> >libertarians have a field day.
>
> I'm not sure who the target of this is - boomers? X'ers? Y'ers?
> A-double-primers?
>
> Doug
======
Pogo is always my target. :-)
The evidence does seem to indicate that boomers have gotten more from the Feds [and state & local govs.] than any generation in history, yet they also want to dismantle more of it than any other generation in history. This glorious bundle of contradictions is due to the usual reasons and still the Leviathan rumbles forth. The question looming on the horizon is just how much more US workers are going to have to pay in taxes for programs no one wants to let go of yet no one wants to pay for and how this plays out demographically. Now we could debate whether periodizing birth/age statistics into generational 'blocs' is a useful social kind that complements class and/or obfuscates it, but that goes to the whole underdetermination issue of social theorizing eh?
Ian