Obama and the Democrats' assault on young people.

[Soul Crusher]

The Assault on the Young (Cont.)
By Robert Samuelson
________________________ _______________

WASHINGTON -- One of our long-running political stories is the economic assault on the young by the old. We have become a society that invests in its past and disfavors the future. This makes no sense for the nation, but as politics, it makes complete sense. The elderly and near elderly are better organized, focus obsessively on their government benefits, and seem deserving. Grandmas and Grandpas command sympathy.

Everyone knows that the resulting "entitlements" dominate government spending and squeeze education, research, defense and almost everything else. In fiscal 2008 -- the last "normal" year before the economic crisis -- Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid (programs wholly or primarily dedicated to the elderly) totaled $1.3 trillion, 43 percent of federal spending and more than twice military spending. Because workers, not retirees, are the primary taxpayers, this spending involves huge transfers to the old.

Comes now the House-passed health care "reform" bill that, amazingly, would extract more subsidies from the young. It mandates that health insurance premiums for older Americans be no more than twice the level of younger Americans. That's much less than the actual health spending gap between young and old. Spending for those aged 60-64 is four to five times greater than those 18-24. So, the young would overpay for insurance which -- under the House bill -- people must buy: 20- and 30-somethings would subsidize premiums for 50- and 60-somethings. (Those 65 and over receive Medicare.)

Not surprisingly, the 40-million member AARP, the major lobby for Americans over 50, was a big force behind this provision. AARP's cynicism is breathtaking. On the one hand, it sponsors a high-minded campaign called "Divided We Fail" and runs sentimental TV ads featuring children pleading for a better tomorrow. "Join us in championing your future and the future of every generation," ended one AARP ad.

Meanwhile, AARP lobbyists scramble to shift their members' costs onto younger generations. For example, the House health legislation improves Medicare's drug benefit. That would help the half of AARP members who are over 65. The other half, those between 50 and 64, could benefit from the skewed insurance premiums.

Although premium changes would apply mainly to people using insurance "exchanges," the differences would be substantial. A single person 55-64 might save $3,490, estimates an Urban Institute study. By contrast, single people in their 20s and early 30s might pay from about $600 to $1,100 more. For the young, the extra cost might be larger, says economist Diana Furchtgott-Roth of the Hudson Institute, because the House bill would require them to purchase fairly generous insurance plans rather than cheaper catastrophic coverage that might better suit their needs.

Whatever the added burden, it would darken the young's already poor economic prospects. Unemployment among 16- to 24-year-olds is 19 percent. Peter Orszag, director of the Office of Management and Budget, notes on his blog that high joblessness depresses young workers' wages and that the adverse effect -- though diminishing -- "is still statistically significant 15 years later." Lost wages over 20 years could total $100,000. Orszag doesn't mention that health care "reform" might compound the loss.

AARP justifies the cost-shifting as preventing age discrimination. Premiums based on age should be no more acceptable than premiums based on medical expenses reflecting race, gender or pre-existing health conditions, it says. The House legislation bans those, so it should also ban age-based rates. AARP dislikes even the 2-1 limit. It thinks premiums for someone 22 and someone 62 should be identical. (In insurance jargon, that would be full "community rating.")

This is unconvincing. All insurance aims to protect against risk -- but within groups facing similar risks. Put differently, most insurance is risk-adjusted. Auto insurance premiums vary by age; younger drivers pay higher rates because they have more accidents. Homeowners' policies for similar houses cost more in high-crime areas. This is not "discrimination"; it's a reflection of risk and cost differences. Insurers that ignored these differences would soon vanish, because they'd suffer heavy losses and lose customers.

On health insurance, we may choose to override some risk adjustments (say, for pre-existing medical conditions) for public policy reasons. But the case for making age one of these exceptions is weak. Working Americans -- the young and middle-aged -- already pay a huge part of the health costs of the elderly through Medicare and Medicaid. These will grow with an aging population and surging health spending. Either taxes will rise or other public services will fall. Already, all governments spend 2.4 times as much per capita on the elderly as on children, reports Julia Isaacs of the Brookings Institution. Why increase the imbalance?

It's true that premiums for older people would be higher. But this might have a silver lining: Facing their true health costs, older Americans might become more eager to control spending.

Copyright 2009, Washington Post Writers Group

________________________ ________________________ ____

These morons voted for these communists.  Let them deal with the nasty results. 

[Soul Crusher]

GOOD COMMENTS ON THE REAL CLEAR POLITICS PAGE:
________________________ ________________________ ____


Posted by: oparoberts   
Nov 23, 12:09 AM Report Abuse
Reply 


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Unfortunately the young were instrumental in selecting BHO as their Champion;

  Posted by: tomd   
Nov 23, 12:25 AM Report Abuse
Reply 


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Although the article is probably factually correct, it is a bit unfair to blame the over 50 crowd for these problems. After all, it was the government that set up social security, medicare, and now health care to "help" people in their golden years. As such, the government has become the insurer of first and last resort and the free market is long gone.

Not really fair to blame the individual when the government is the culprit.

  Posted by: V   
Nov 23, 01:07 AM Report Abuse
Reply 


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Hey, I'm 28 and think that people my age are morons because they elected a MORON for president. I'm mad because Obama honestly believes that he can government competent as if it existed. It never has been done.

  Posted by: Adel   
Nov 23, 01:16 AM Report Abuse
Reply 


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

What this writer FAILED TO MENTION is that the older generation has ALREADY PAID THEIR FAIR SHARE or taxes and medicare!

Let's not forget, someone who is now 65 has already had medicare taxes taken out of their paychecks for 45 + years! They have paid their income taxes for 45 + years! It's NOT Their fault the government is too inept to manage the money properly! And now the government wants to take over even more...why? So they can mismanage that too?

  Posted by: John Gray   
Nov 23, 01:46 AM Report Abuse
Reply 


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Response: To those that say Seniors have already contributed to Medicare/SS, or their "Fair Share."

Here's the math:
1. Total up AVERAGE worker contributions (Medicare/SS): during working years
2. Subtract AVERAGE benefits during retirement: during retirement years
3. Adjust for inflation, etc.
4. You are looking at about $50-100k/person NEGATIVE gap.

This is the pure definition of a Ponzi scheme.

One commenter posted that it is not the seniors' fault that the government mis-managed the finances so badly. As a younger person, I would point out: since we were not born when you older people voted these people in to set up these systems, shouldn't you clean up this mess and not us?

That aside:

What is NOT fair is that the same Seniors would not permit the younger generations to opt out of this pathetic scam. See the Bush proposal circa 2005. It would protect the old who were already in the system and let the young opt out, but the greedy geezers raised hell and the idea died.

Here is a proposal to you Greedy Geezers, once and for all: We younger people will subsidize you pathetic moochers. All we ask in return is the right to fend for ourselves.

So, how about it, you Baby Boomers, aka, the Greediest Generation?

  Posted by: Letscheck   
Nov 23, 02:02 AM Report Abuse
Reply 


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Could it be that the government is at fault here?

I have worked all of my life and paid into all of these entitlement programs from every single check I have ever earned. The government saw fit to give my money to people who did not work. They said that the money would be there for us when we retired so it was okay for us to lose all of that money from out pay.

In the meantime, they gave benefits to people who came from other countries, money to start up a business. They gave to welfare recipients and their many children. They gave to everyone who wanted money and now, after paying for them for a lifetime, those benefits are not there for the person who has paid for them?

I could have used that money for myself. I really needed it for my kids. But we struggled on and lived on what was left of my pay. Others used that money to buy better cars than I could afford, used food stamps, went to college, started businesses, while I paid for myself and my family along with all of those other people who added nothing. Our money was also used to pay for the Social Security, Medicade etc. for the generations before us who never paid into it.

How much do you expect one generation to give?

Obama is getting himself into very deep waters here, because he has no clue that those of us who paid for his father to have an education in the U.S. and paid for his mother, grandfather and grandmother to have benefits that he wants to take away from us, have had it up to our ears with paying our for everyone else only to have him offer us a red pill or a blue pill. He wants to spread our money all over the globe and devalue it at the same time.

Obama has not really thought this out or if he has, then he is evil. People have suffered to make him comfortable his entire life and he could care less. He's happy because he can fly around in Air Force One and have parties every night while Americans suffer.

This will end in the very near future. Freeloaders have been taking away our money for decades and it is time to end it. Obama care, free cars, free health insurance, free houses...smoke and mirrors.

This country needs a new answer and Obama doesn't have it.

  Posted by: Iago   
Nov 23, 02:26 AM Report Abuse
Reply 


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Samuelson always has his arguments right, and his big picture perspective wrong.

There have been exactly three times since WWII when the economy was growing in a way that could support projected entitlements. The first period was 1945-1965, a period of growth and jobs when the growth of the economy paid off the massive debts of WWII and when the Social Security accounts were funded. This era ended when LBJ passed the Great Society programs that began taking massive amounts of money out of the economy and wasting it. The markets (DOW) went sideways for seventeen years (1966-1983) with minimal growth and three major recessions including the Carter Catastrophe, when unemployment was even greater than it is now and interest rates exceeded 20%. LBJ also dumped Social Security receipts and disbursements into the general fund, and there was no longer a pretense of fiscal accountability for Social Security beyond that of general tax revenues.

The Reagan Revolution restored growth and gave us a chance to pay off the growing entitlements. Democrats insist that the national debt grew during the Reagan years, which it did by $1.875 trillion. But the Democrats do not tell you that the total increase in the national debt during the Reagan years was almost exactly the amount that LBJ's War on Poverty, the single largest component of the Great Society programs, was costing us during that time, some $220 billion per year. During the Reagan years it became obvious that the War on Poverty was not accomplishing its goal and was creating massive fraud and corruption, but the Democrats blocked reform of the system until 1995, after Reagan had been out of office for seven years.

But the sterling growth of the Reagan years continued until the Bubba Bubble raised its ugly head in 1996, and the economy massively overheated. The Bubba Bubble popped in year 2000 when the NASDAQ fell $2-1/2 trillion, GDP went flat, and government revenues plunged, all before Clinton left office at the beginning of 2001. The economic growth of the Clinton years ended in 1999, but the Democrats' rosy projections of continued growth are still heard, even though the economy was in free-fall at the time Clinton left office.

The Bubba Bubble was the third largest economic bubble in history after the Roaring Twenties/Great Depression and the Japanese Bubble/Japanese crash of 1991. But unlike the Great Depression and the Japanese Crash, President Bush took the proper corrective actions and growth and jobs were restored, the third period of growth when entitlements looked as if they could be paid.

But this third and final period of growth ended abruptly when the Democrats Mortgage Follies, passed into law during the Carter and Clinton mal-Administrations, collapsed.

The Obama mal-Administration is making no pretext of resuming growth and is, to the contrary, massively ending growth and massively increasing entitlements. The Obana entitlements will never be paid, nor will Social Security and Medicare entitlements. So do not worry about them, find something productive to worry about.

  Posted by: Sherlock   
Nov 23, 04:14 AM Report Abuse
Reply 


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Well, it is wonderful to see these angry young voters commenting. Somehow, to the young, this just doesn't seem fair, and I agree. But, just remember this as a teaching moment in your life. Your generation elected Obama, and you get what you vote for, like it or not. This my young friends is liberalism at its best. My generation has had two rounds of this in our lifetime, and now I say to you, welcome to the real world. I began working in the LBJ years, and I thought it was horrible that the government would take one out of every five days of pay. I watched through the seventies, as my welfare classmates used my tax dollars to go off to college to party and be educated for free. Many of these freeloaders got on disability Social Security before they were 30 years old, and I wouldn't even write about that if they weren't always bragging about the deer they kill, and how far they had to carry the kill to load it on their new four-wheeler, or how many fish they caught while fishing in their new boats, or how many months a year they would spend on vacation. And the ones who were not on disability Social Security, were on Worker Compensation from the state, until the state coffers were empty, and had to get private insurance to take it over. Now, I'm not against the youth opt out, but I do want what I have paid into these government programs paid back to me with interest. Hey, is that not fair? And these young people who voted for hope and change (this extreme form of Liberalism), welcome to the real world. These college campus freaks, cheering for the teleprompter, that now have a four year degree, and are working for minimum wages, well, this is liberalism at its finest. The next three years will be a reality check for you. We older people, will be hoping you become as intelligent as you think you think you already are. Oh me, I'm unemployed again, for the first time since '79, over 40 years in the work force, and at least 12 more years to retirement. Mr. President and Congress, I don't want unemployment benefits, or even extended unemployment benefits, I want a job, and not a government job where I am a burden on other taxpayers. Liberalism always stands in the way of prosperity. Government, stop regulating business and the American worker, please, and if you will, we will make America the envy of the world again.

  Posted by: SpeakTruth   
Nov 23, 04:14 AM Report Abuse
Reply 


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Adel Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> What this writer FAILED TO MENTION is that the
> older generation has ALREADY PAID THEIR FAIR SHARE
> or taxes and medicare!
>
> Let's not forget, someone who is now 65 has
> already had medicare taxes taken out of their
> paychecks for 45 + years! They have paid their
> income taxes for 45 + years! It's NOT Their fault
> the government is too inept to manage the money
> properly! And now the government wants to take
> over even more...why? So they can mismanage that
> too?


You are correct that the government mismanages just about everything it touches. And having worked on the "inside," and tried valiantly (if mostly futilely) to stop waste and stupidity in spending, I have no confidence government will ever be better. The main reason? Zero accountability. You can't "vote out" the faceless bureaucrats who draw their pay and pensions. And they're immortal. One retires, and three replace him.

Having said that, part of the incompetence of government is in the allocation of taxes and collections for social security etc. Even though we all "contributed" throughout our working lives, believe me, we never paid in nearly as much as we're getting out. It's a massive Ponzi scheme. And now our children and grandchildren and their grandchildren are being victimized to pay for it.

And the terrible part is that even if you don't WANT Medicare, the government forces you to take it. I would rather just pay my own health insurance, but the government insists on sticking its nose in and forcing my participation in Medicare.
I think it's time to start over on this "grand experiment" that has been our democracy. It's been taken over by thugs, thieves and charlatans.

  Posted by: EJM   
Nov 23, 04:28 AM Report Abuse
Reply 


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Isn't it interesting that most everyone recognizes that the path of ever increasing expansion of entitlement
spending and exploding government debt is completely unsustainable--a classic Ponzi scheme. Yet for 75
years we have kept going down that same path as a nation. Only the rate at which we accelerated toward
destruction slowed somewhat during the 80's and 90's, but the direction was not reversed.

For years we have heard that Social Security and Medicare are "unfunded liabilities" whose growh needs to
be curbed. So what do our present Congress and President do: propose a massive expansion of government and unfunded liabilities with phony accounting gimmicks to hide its true costs. All fair analysis of the health care "reform" bills now before Congress will do nothing to control balloning health care costs. This manipulation of the gullible by the cynical in order to keep the democratic party in power indefinitely hastens the day of reckoning.

Wake up America. Wise up, younger generation. Your future is being systematically destroyed.
The USA was founded on fiscal prudence and limited government. It has worked well for
over 200 years, but it is not too big to fail.

  Posted by: Jim.   
Nov 23, 04:48 AM Report Abuse
Reply 


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Working Americans -- the young and middle-aged -- already pay a huge part of the health costs of the elderly through Medicare and Medicaid. These will grow with an aging population and surging health spending. Either taxes will rise or other public services will fall. Already, all governments spend 2.4 times as much per capita on the elderly as on children, reports Julia Isaacs of the Brookings Institution."

The biggest danger of this health care "reform" debacle is that the young will wake up and realize what it truly costs them, and they'll start to say, "Death panels, what a great idea."