For at least two generations, the Soc. Sec. system seemed to work. The population expanded, so there were more and more people paying in...GDP growth was solid...and tech advances spurred productivity
I agree with some of your comments Bill but we all know humans will always vote for people who give them what they want, the feeling of security " in their lifetime". That's the mess we find ourselves in today. I am sure that all the BPR readers know a lot of people who "live for today" and don't really plan for tomorrow. Sadly, they will continue to vote for someone to bail them out when they run out of money.
Mr. Marshall, This essay is more "virtue signaling" from Bill. The debt train left the station years ago, and he knows this. And he knows good and well that at this point, it's all about jobs, jobs, jobs. You slash the debt, you kill millions of govt. and govt. contractor jobs, bringing about even more job losses from these folks' lack of spending, leading to a depression and a stock market collapse. After an enormous voter backlash, the Democrats would then take the WH & Congress, and in Jan. 2029, would immediately REVERSE all of these drastic budget cuts. So what has been accomplished? Answer: Radical leftists completely control the federal govt, and eventually the SCOTUS as Justices Thomas & Alito can no longer hold out.
Then Bill slips in the aging of the U.S. population to promote open borders in a sneaky way so tens of millions more third-world peasants can pour into the country hoping to become U.S. citizens (aka permanent Democrat voters) so they can vote themselves an endless amount of free stuff compliments of the so-called rich Yankees. Also very telling is Bill leaving out Medicaid and Welfare spending while only mentioning Social Security and Medicare spending.
Frank, I read your opinion and I don't see how that negates my response. Your hypothesis could happen. Only God knows the future. My response is backed up by the history of the human race.
And, has the government ever done anything for the people that was NOT a PONZI scam? Most politicians, at any level, are there for the money & power, not for America or the people.
"...the feds have no intention of making them try. But every debt is paid by someone — either the debtor or the creditor..."
Let's vote that Mr. Trump is consistent with his reputation as a debt dodger, and simply lets the creditors pay by writing off (repudiating) the national debt. The great majority of voters in every age group will approve that, and he will go down in history as a savior of the people and the nation.
As an “old duffer,” I would have loved him too, if he’d have followed through. The “bloom is off the rose,” although I firmly believed several promises, like “draining the swamp,” were unrealistic and unachievable campaign promises. Like Obama, Trump has morphed into a disappointment, wishful thinking is not a strategy.
I am with you rKf. And, unfortunately with our government on all levels, it is about them and not us. If you had your head on straight a long, long time ago, you figured out how to keep as much as you can from the dirty hands of the government. They promise what they must to get elected and keep getting elected. And, for their own good, they quickly realize to get along you have to go along. Even now, the military industrial complex is going to keep building more and more expensive weapons even though they are not effect and our military is unable to be a long term force outside the western hemisphere. We think we won WW2 - nope, the Russians did. Both in Europe and in the Far East. And, since then, what wars has the U.S. won. Even today with Venezuela, the ruling class are still in charge. As for the American Empire - along time ago as Julius Caesar once utter - "Alea iacta est". The government isn't for the people. It is going to get uglier for us peons before it gets better.
Back in the sixties - I was already in the military - a friend and I were discussing the futility of Vietnam, based on what happened to the French. Does it remind you of Afghanistan? Anyway, his dad was Army, an officer, and not in danger of a bullet in the back of the head. My friend kept calling me a commie; I was the one in the military, not him. He couldn’t believe my ignorance, hmm, who seems ignorant now? There is a revealing book by Walter Scheidel, “The Great Leveler,” that describes, among other things, how governments cull the herd of young, fully testoserized - my made up word of the day - men who might challenge the authority of government. These days, if one doesn’t vote with the crowd, good-bye. “And the beat goes one…”
We ol' timers are a different breed. Join in the Navy in 1966 and had similar thoughts as time when on. It is easy for those elites and in government to send other sons (and now daughters) to war but not their own. Even the senior Bush kept his sons from the "real" military. Trump - himself - and his son are no exceptions to the elite rules. Lindsay Graham - easily sends others but not his family. Just the way of the rules these days and I don't see it changing.
We contemporaries be, I too joined in ‘66, Coast Guard. My wish is that those who declare the wars, lead the charge as in days of yore; may Graham and Bush and Trump and Shapiro drop their megaphones, grab their AKs and such and run toward their chosen enemy to feel the glory of battle and taste the sweat, piss, and blood they so relish. Let skin in the game be the new determinant of motivation.
Social Security was created by politicians, for politicians. It is best to Ignore this metric.
We live in a society where 52% of women age to 20 to 39 are without children. Donald Trump or his solutions did not create this shift. It took years of horrible policies and programming to short circuit human nature.
As Darwin would likely say, natural selection will be the ultimate decider, if a population chooses to not replicate then it will be replaced by a population that does.
Or if ET is real by them, with a bit of help from AI.
Google Gemini suggests that a person born in 1950 who began working at age 21 and retired in 2015 would have $1,270,000 at retirement based on a 6% compounded return and achieving the maximum contribution. This includes both employee and employer contributions, which are approximately $300,000. That same person would be able to withdraw over $100,000 per year for 20 years assuming their declining balance was earning 6% annually. This refutes the notion that boomers have milked the SS system to their own advantage. The system has been looted by irresponsible members of Congress. I would invite Dan or Tom to do their own analysis, because as I suspected, Bill’s hypothesis doesn’t appear to hold water.
Jim, why not 6%? Note that I do call out politicians as the real culprits of a deficit that should not exist, at least nowhere near the level it does now.
My comment on 6% is that over my lifetime I have not seen a steady 6% growth in the S.S. fund. If this did happen and congress kept their hands out of the cookie jar, the younger ones coming up would be a lot better of.
This certainly proves that a private system (or a publicly mandated system that was actually a pension not "pay go") could be effective. A real defined contribution plan system would have no demographic issues. But unfortunately we have a pay go system.
Any money congress removed from the social security trust fund to finance spending is treated as a loan and is legally required to be paid back. This has not impacted the stated "balance" in the trust fund. Regardless of congressional borrowing, the fund was not large enough to cover boomer benefits. In order to make it large enough, boomers would have had to pay much higher SS taxes than they did.
I think what Bill is saying is that the borrowed funds were used for things that the boomers enjoyed (or at least consumed) and that would have required them to pay higher federal taxes otherwise. The trust fund loans will be paid back, but not by the boomers.
BTW, I asked Google this question: "Has trust fund depletion date been impacted by congress borrowing from the fund?"
Here's the answer: "No, the depletion date has not been changed or accelerated because Congress borrowed from the fund.The trust fund is running out of money purely due to an imbalance between taxes collected and benefits paid, driven by a growing number of retirees and fewer workers."
Great question and helpful clarification of Bill’s premise. But what were those implied services we received? Not sure we asked for or benefited from them…
I'm sure most of Bill's readers would like to see the federal government do a whole lot less. I'm sure you didn't ask for these things but the elected officials who did and the people/organizations who benefited from them were largely of the boomer generation and the tab will be paid by someone else. Regardless, this did not impact the trust fund balance.
Bill - I am one of the old guys with the money. I am 65. My father is 89 and has a bit more than me. When the boomers die, that money and assets does not disappear. Thanks to a $25 million exemption, the lion's share of it is passed to the next generation. Even my younger son, who just turned 30, is figuring it out. He told me he observed through people he knows and his own experience, that things gradually get easier as you get older. You gain experience at work which makes you more valuable to your employer so he pays you more, and a lot of structural needs that you borrowed money for - cars in particular - start to get paid off. Don't worry - people in the "under 30" bar eventually graduate into the "70+" if they are lucky enough to live that long.
Erik, Exactly. Also, money flows through an economic system as you point out. So much of the SS money helps younger folk. Maybe Bill has never financially assisted his children after they reached 18, but most SS recipients do. And it's not all financial. It can be housing or transportation assistance, or both, as two examples. Also, Bill throws out naked stats without analyzing them. This is typical propaganda. For example, he indicates that some pollster discovered that 42% of young Americans are barely making it. But he doesn't do further research, or with his great wealth, could easily hire someone to research for him, about who these 42% are, and why are they in this financial predicament? Are they at all responsible for this predicament or is the blame to be totally laid at their parents' feet? Most likely, both parties share some of the blame.
It's not what Bill writes; it's what he doesn't write or explain/analyze further that is very telling.
Frank - you are correct. Each of our two sons bought older houses in their 20's as that's what they could afford. As their families grew, my wife and I helped with remodeling projects that helped them modernize their homes and in turn taught them more about wiring, insulation, plumbing, flooring, sheetrock, painting, and project planning. All things I learned from my dad when I was young. Best of all, it was great bonding doing these projects together.
Slight quibble with the generalization about old folks voting out Massie. Only 48% of boomers are registered Republicans, and even though the older ones in polling showed a preference for Gallrein, the majority of boomers, like the majority in every other generation, did not vote in the primaries at all. A plurality of boomers in combination with not inconsequential minorities in other age groups made the difference.
You pose the choice as between big government (the big man) and I guess the other choice is "small government"? I'd like to know where you find this "small" government, Bill? Maybe you should explain where there was small government. Do you mean like less billions to immigrant scams? Or maybe less millions to Joe's family? Of maybe if the vaccines had worked to do no harm society would have been more productive? Seems to me the choice was between big government with some indication of smaller and super outrageously large government with productivity reduced and merit discarded. That was the choice I saw.
Old people generally have more money than young people. So what’s your point.
You’re wrong about 90% of the time. This post you might be 100%.
Reagan and Volcker conspired to change the way CPI was calculated in 1981. This resulted in the underreporting of inflation in the ensuing 45 years.
With SS, and private pensions, and union contract increases tied to CPI, trillions have been stolen from retirees and workers over those 46 years.
S. S. Was never intended to provide 100% of retiree income. But it’s no surprise we are there for so many. The allowed destruction of defined pension benefits, the 401k passive investing scam that benefits the brokers, bankers and hedge funds, the govt caused or engineered crashes of 1981, 1987, 2001, 2008, 2013, 2020 have decimated the middle class.
And the FED and Congress have failed over and over again to even debate sensible reforms to the system. It’s not difficult to figure out how to fix it. They simply don’t want to.
Young people are getting a raw deal. No doubt. But in 1983 17% mortgage rates, double digit inflation for multiple years, tax reform to benefit the wealthy, and more, those were raw deals too.
Every ‘generation’ gets screwed. Some worse than others perhaps. But a system is what a system does. And the system is designed to screw the average person at every stage of their life.
I am not a Baby Boomer. Bill is a Baby Boomer. We all have our tobacco farm stories. It is called “The Preparation,” the basic values and experiences that form us.
For some of us it has been quite a ride; we look back and say, “look at what I built.” Bill’s resume is impressive. His lifestyle is to be envied: France, Ireland, Costa Rica, Maryland, Argentina, Paraguay.
I enjoy some of Casey’s ideas. We went wrong during the Civil War… the South had a right to secede.
The problem is that successive generations made America into a great nation until it became a cesspool of destruction, empire and war when a small group of elites took over “democracy.”
It started with the great hero Reagan when he rewrote the tax laws and ushered in “The Age of Greed.” Or could have been the assassination of Kennedy. What about “The Silent Generation.”
Bill is a great writer, obviously a great instinct for talent; an empire built on a good sales pitch. He has never dirtied his hands in the fray; he quit it in the 70’s and made a fortune disparaging it. What is that wonderful quote by Rudyard Kipling?
Casey was a great speculator.
Seems to me blaming some group of slobs about the accident of birth is a smoke screen, more identity politics, divide and conquer.
I hate what the geezers did to Massie and their stupid support of Trump regardless of the brutal facts. They are too dense to cause much trouble.
“Drain the swamp” seems so quaint now. Such a lofty goal. Nary a peep about that now from Trump & Co. Hell, the new slogan is more like, “Fill the swamp”!
I just realized that at 73 in one year I will become an outlier on the bellcurve of age. I see this as an awesome accomplishment! Ty for heightened my awareness 🫶🏼
In the words of the immortal Alfred E. Newman: "What, me worry (about inflation, crumbling infrastructure, unending wars, the national debt, lobbyists controlling CONgress, etc)? We going to have 'rasling on the White House lawn!
All's we need is someone like President Dwayne Camacho (Idiocracy) in office to tell us: "Shit. I know shit's bad right now... But I got a solution!"
I agree with some of your comments Bill but we all know humans will always vote for people who give them what they want, the feeling of security " in their lifetime". That's the mess we find ourselves in today. I am sure that all the BPR readers know a lot of people who "live for today" and don't really plan for tomorrow. Sadly, they will continue to vote for someone to bail them out when they run out of money.
Jim Marshall
Mr. Marshall, This essay is more "virtue signaling" from Bill. The debt train left the station years ago, and he knows this. And he knows good and well that at this point, it's all about jobs, jobs, jobs. You slash the debt, you kill millions of govt. and govt. contractor jobs, bringing about even more job losses from these folks' lack of spending, leading to a depression and a stock market collapse. After an enormous voter backlash, the Democrats would then take the WH & Congress, and in Jan. 2029, would immediately REVERSE all of these drastic budget cuts. So what has been accomplished? Answer: Radical leftists completely control the federal govt, and eventually the SCOTUS as Justices Thomas & Alito can no longer hold out.
Then Bill slips in the aging of the U.S. population to promote open borders in a sneaky way so tens of millions more third-world peasants can pour into the country hoping to become U.S. citizens (aka permanent Democrat voters) so they can vote themselves an endless amount of free stuff compliments of the so-called rich Yankees. Also very telling is Bill leaving out Medicaid and Welfare spending while only mentioning Social Security and Medicare spending.
Frank, I read your opinion and I don't see how that negates my response. Your hypothesis could happen. Only God knows the future. My response is backed up by the history of the human race.
Jim Marshall
sounds like drug addiction of the masses ..?
And, has the government ever done anything for the people that was NOT a PONZI scam? Most politicians, at any level, are there for the money & power, not for America or the people.
"...the feds have no intention of making them try. But every debt is paid by someone — either the debtor or the creditor..."
Let's vote that Mr. Trump is consistent with his reputation as a debt dodger, and simply lets the creditors pay by writing off (repudiating) the national debt. The great majority of voters in every age group will approve that, and he will go down in history as a savior of the people and the nation.
In the past that would be called a jubilee where the
country as a whole can then make a fresh start with no debt.
The problem is that it rewards the reckless speculators, and that was the "Moral Hazard"
that Keynes warned about.
Economics was derived from Moral Philosophy, which is not deemed relevant anymore.
As an “old duffer,” I would have loved him too, if he’d have followed through. The “bloom is off the rose,” although I firmly believed several promises, like “draining the swamp,” were unrealistic and unachievable campaign promises. Like Obama, Trump has morphed into a disappointment, wishful thinking is not a strategy.
I am with you rKf. And, unfortunately with our government on all levels, it is about them and not us. If you had your head on straight a long, long time ago, you figured out how to keep as much as you can from the dirty hands of the government. They promise what they must to get elected and keep getting elected. And, for their own good, they quickly realize to get along you have to go along. Even now, the military industrial complex is going to keep building more and more expensive weapons even though they are not effect and our military is unable to be a long term force outside the western hemisphere. We think we won WW2 - nope, the Russians did. Both in Europe and in the Far East. And, since then, what wars has the U.S. won. Even today with Venezuela, the ruling class are still in charge. As for the American Empire - along time ago as Julius Caesar once utter - "Alea iacta est". The government isn't for the people. It is going to get uglier for us peons before it gets better.
Back in the sixties - I was already in the military - a friend and I were discussing the futility of Vietnam, based on what happened to the French. Does it remind you of Afghanistan? Anyway, his dad was Army, an officer, and not in danger of a bullet in the back of the head. My friend kept calling me a commie; I was the one in the military, not him. He couldn’t believe my ignorance, hmm, who seems ignorant now? There is a revealing book by Walter Scheidel, “The Great Leveler,” that describes, among other things, how governments cull the herd of young, fully testoserized - my made up word of the day - men who might challenge the authority of government. These days, if one doesn’t vote with the crowd, good-bye. “And the beat goes one…”
We ol' timers are a different breed. Join in the Navy in 1966 and had similar thoughts as time when on. It is easy for those elites and in government to send other sons (and now daughters) to war but not their own. Even the senior Bush kept his sons from the "real" military. Trump - himself - and his son are no exceptions to the elite rules. Lindsay Graham - easily sends others but not his family. Just the way of the rules these days and I don't see it changing.
We contemporaries be, I too joined in ‘66, Coast Guard. My wish is that those who declare the wars, lead the charge as in days of yore; may Graham and Bush and Trump and Shapiro drop their megaphones, grab their AKs and such and run toward their chosen enemy to feel the glory of battle and taste the sweat, piss, and blood they so relish. Let skin in the game be the new determinant of motivation.
Social Security was created by politicians, for politicians. It is best to Ignore this metric.
We live in a society where 52% of women age to 20 to 39 are without children. Donald Trump or his solutions did not create this shift. It took years of horrible policies and programming to short circuit human nature.
As Darwin would likely say, natural selection will be the ultimate decider, if a population chooses to not replicate then it will be replaced by a population that does.
Or if ET is real by them, with a bit of help from AI.
I note that your chart has only 2 genders. Doesn't that seem a bit reductive and overly supportive of the cis-normative patriarchy?
Nicely done!
😂😂😂👏👏
Google Gemini suggests that a person born in 1950 who began working at age 21 and retired in 2015 would have $1,270,000 at retirement based on a 6% compounded return and achieving the maximum contribution. This includes both employee and employer contributions, which are approximately $300,000. That same person would be able to withdraw over $100,000 per year for 20 years assuming their declining balance was earning 6% annually. This refutes the notion that boomers have milked the SS system to their own advantage. The system has been looted by irresponsible members of Congress. I would invite Dan or Tom to do their own analysis, because as I suspected, Bill’s hypothesis doesn’t appear to hold water.
Your analysis is probably correct, BUT, the 6% annual growth over that timeframe didn't work AND, Congress always had their hand in the cookie jar.
Jim Marshall
Jim, why not 6%? Note that I do call out politicians as the real culprits of a deficit that should not exist, at least nowhere near the level it does now.
My comment on 6% is that over my lifetime I have not seen a steady 6% growth in the S.S. fund. If this did happen and congress kept their hands out of the cookie jar, the younger ones coming up would be a lot better of.
Jim
This certainly proves that a private system (or a publicly mandated system that was actually a pension not "pay go") could be effective. A real defined contribution plan system would have no demographic issues. But unfortunately we have a pay go system.
Any money congress removed from the social security trust fund to finance spending is treated as a loan and is legally required to be paid back. This has not impacted the stated "balance" in the trust fund. Regardless of congressional borrowing, the fund was not large enough to cover boomer benefits. In order to make it large enough, boomers would have had to pay much higher SS taxes than they did.
I think what Bill is saying is that the borrowed funds were used for things that the boomers enjoyed (or at least consumed) and that would have required them to pay higher federal taxes otherwise. The trust fund loans will be paid back, but not by the boomers.
BTW, I asked Google this question: "Has trust fund depletion date been impacted by congress borrowing from the fund?"
Here's the answer: "No, the depletion date has not been changed or accelerated because Congress borrowed from the fund.The trust fund is running out of money purely due to an imbalance between taxes collected and benefits paid, driven by a growing number of retirees and fewer workers."
Great question and helpful clarification of Bill’s premise. But what were those implied services we received? Not sure we asked for or benefited from them…
I'm sure most of Bill's readers would like to see the federal government do a whole lot less. I'm sure you didn't ask for these things but the elected officials who did and the people/organizations who benefited from them were largely of the boomer generation and the tab will be paid by someone else. Regardless, this did not impact the trust fund balance.
Bill so certain us old geezers actually want a Trump.
No one is voting for "more of the same".
Most of us old folk despise the societal developments of the past 20 years.
What us old folks are vying for is a return to sanity.
What Bonner omits...
It was a binary choice between bad and worse...
Yep
Bill - I am one of the old guys with the money. I am 65. My father is 89 and has a bit more than me. When the boomers die, that money and assets does not disappear. Thanks to a $25 million exemption, the lion's share of it is passed to the next generation. Even my younger son, who just turned 30, is figuring it out. He told me he observed through people he knows and his own experience, that things gradually get easier as you get older. You gain experience at work which makes you more valuable to your employer so he pays you more, and a lot of structural needs that you borrowed money for - cars in particular - start to get paid off. Don't worry - people in the "under 30" bar eventually graduate into the "70+" if they are lucky enough to live that long.
Right on Erik!
I remember well, was complaining to my father in the 1970's.
I had more difficulty obtaining a house than he did in the 1950's.
My kids think the same...
Your kids are not wrong.
Yes my kids are correct if residing here in West SoCal...
O.C. California is stupidly overpriced.
And Sacramento is doing everything imaginable to reduce the housing prices.
By turning the county into a huge slum.
-
Sacramento has highjacked local building ordinances.
Blackmailing cities to recklessly build on top of more in pre-congested areas.
Irresponsibly and knowingly ignoring basic human services.
Parking, trash, hospitals, schools, supermarkets, utilities, etc...
-
Building tenement complexes wherever there's a freeway offramp.
This is not an exaggeration!
-
Not sure when the notion came to be.
But when I was young, where you could not afford to live, you simply did not.
Sacramento seems to think differently...
-
However...
Homes are aplenty in east California, and cheap.
So much depends upon the weather...
Erik, Exactly. Also, money flows through an economic system as you point out. So much of the SS money helps younger folk. Maybe Bill has never financially assisted his children after they reached 18, but most SS recipients do. And it's not all financial. It can be housing or transportation assistance, or both, as two examples. Also, Bill throws out naked stats without analyzing them. This is typical propaganda. For example, he indicates that some pollster discovered that 42% of young Americans are barely making it. But he doesn't do further research, or with his great wealth, could easily hire someone to research for him, about who these 42% are, and why are they in this financial predicament? Are they at all responsible for this predicament or is the blame to be totally laid at their parents' feet? Most likely, both parties share some of the blame.
It's not what Bill writes; it's what he doesn't write or explain/analyze further that is very telling.
Frank - you are correct. Each of our two sons bought older houses in their 20's as that's what they could afford. As their families grew, my wife and I helped with remodeling projects that helped them modernize their homes and in turn taught them more about wiring, insulation, plumbing, flooring, sheetrock, painting, and project planning. All things I learned from my dad when I was young. Best of all, it was great bonding doing these projects together.
Cheer up, Millenials; soon prices will drop to those of a third world shithole, which is the ultimate destiny of the USSA.
The predictions of Phil Anderson seem to be nearing...
If you've read his book, you know what I am referencing.
"The Secret Life of Real Estate and Banking".
If events continue on the direction they seem to be going.
2028 might be a great opportunity to purchase real estate.
Thanks - I'll check that book out.
Slight quibble with the generalization about old folks voting out Massie. Only 48% of boomers are registered Republicans, and even though the older ones in polling showed a preference for Gallrein, the majority of boomers, like the majority in every other generation, did not vote in the primaries at all. A plurality of boomers in combination with not inconsequential minorities in other age groups made the difference.
You pose the choice as between big government (the big man) and I guess the other choice is "small government"? I'd like to know where you find this "small" government, Bill? Maybe you should explain where there was small government. Do you mean like less billions to immigrant scams? Or maybe less millions to Joe's family? Of maybe if the vaccines had worked to do no harm society would have been more productive? Seems to me the choice was between big government with some indication of smaller and super outrageously large government with productivity reduced and merit discarded. That was the choice I saw.
Old people generally have more money than young people. So what’s your point.
You’re wrong about 90% of the time. This post you might be 100%.
Reagan and Volcker conspired to change the way CPI was calculated in 1981. This resulted in the underreporting of inflation in the ensuing 45 years.
With SS, and private pensions, and union contract increases tied to CPI, trillions have been stolen from retirees and workers over those 46 years.
S. S. Was never intended to provide 100% of retiree income. But it’s no surprise we are there for so many. The allowed destruction of defined pension benefits, the 401k passive investing scam that benefits the brokers, bankers and hedge funds, the govt caused or engineered crashes of 1981, 1987, 2001, 2008, 2013, 2020 have decimated the middle class.
And the FED and Congress have failed over and over again to even debate sensible reforms to the system. It’s not difficult to figure out how to fix it. They simply don’t want to.
Young people are getting a raw deal. No doubt. But in 1983 17% mortgage rates, double digit inflation for multiple years, tax reform to benefit the wealthy, and more, those were raw deals too.
Every ‘generation’ gets screwed. Some worse than others perhaps. But a system is what a system does. And the system is designed to screw the average person at every stage of their life.
You of all people should know that.
Amazingly many young folks fail to understand it was not meant to provide full retirement, rather augment retirement for those that really needed it.
As an employer I get to know some of the employee mind set here.
Most all are counting on100% SS dependendency.
Very few here have alternative sources of income or substantial holdings other than the company profit sharing program (it's a generous one!).
I believe the educational institutions are greatly responsible for this lack of knowledge and interest.
I am not a Baby Boomer. Bill is a Baby Boomer. We all have our tobacco farm stories. It is called “The Preparation,” the basic values and experiences that form us.
For some of us it has been quite a ride; we look back and say, “look at what I built.” Bill’s resume is impressive. His lifestyle is to be envied: France, Ireland, Costa Rica, Maryland, Argentina, Paraguay.
I enjoy some of Casey’s ideas. We went wrong during the Civil War… the South had a right to secede.
The problem is that successive generations made America into a great nation until it became a cesspool of destruction, empire and war when a small group of elites took over “democracy.”
It started with the great hero Reagan when he rewrote the tax laws and ushered in “The Age of Greed.” Or could have been the assassination of Kennedy. What about “The Silent Generation.”
Bill is a great writer, obviously a great instinct for talent; an empire built on a good sales pitch. He has never dirtied his hands in the fray; he quit it in the 70’s and made a fortune disparaging it. What is that wonderful quote by Rudyard Kipling?
Casey was a great speculator.
Seems to me blaming some group of slobs about the accident of birth is a smoke screen, more identity politics, divide and conquer.
I hate what the geezers did to Massie and their stupid support of Trump regardless of the brutal facts. They are too dense to cause much trouble.
“Drain the swamp” seems so quaint now. Such a lofty goal. Nary a peep about that now from Trump & Co. Hell, the new slogan is more like, “Fill the swamp”!
MAGA, my rear end.
I just realized that at 73 in one year I will become an outlier on the bellcurve of age. I see this as an awesome accomplishment! Ty for heightened my awareness 🫶🏼
In the words of the immortal Alfred E. Newman: "What, me worry (about inflation, crumbling infrastructure, unending wars, the national debt, lobbyists controlling CONgress, etc)? We going to have 'rasling on the White House lawn!
All's we need is someone like President Dwayne Camacho (Idiocracy) in office to tell us: "Shit. I know shit's bad right now... But I got a solution!"
To further quote Alfred...
A penny saved is a government oversight.