The fun libertarians (just kidding) at Reason have a big new poll out about Millennials -- okay, not "about" Millennials, as in that case the answer would just be "Millennials suck," but rather asking Millennials for their "thoughts" about "stuff." Luckily, the poll confirms everything we have been saying about them since 1986 or so: these little fuckers will be the next Reagan Youth. They are all "waah, cut government" and "waaah, cut Social Security" and "waaah, Obama did not give me anything except reduced student loan payments and health insurance so I do not die of easily preventable diseases and some SNAP benefits so I do not die of scurvy and extended unemployment benefits so I do not die of homelessness except I never held a job long enough to qualify because I quit once I found out the boss of the business was going to tell me to do stuff, HOW IS THAT EVEN FAIR I HAVE RIGHTS, MAAAAAN and also Obama did drones :( gonna update my tumblr brb."
Fox News: Oh sure, maybe 66% did say that "raising taxes on the wealthy would help the economy," but take them away and we still have the 59% who said that "cutting taxes would help the economy." And that's a majority, so there!
The respondents are in favor of reducing regulations, reducing the size of government and cutting government spending by 5%...
while at the same time they want government to provide more assistance to the poor, fund more job training and infrastructure improvements, guarantee educational opportunity and access for everyone (so that college is not just accessible for the wealthy only) and that it acts to reduce homelessness, hunger and poverty in America.
Nope, no contradiction there!
I am less convinced that this provides evidence of confusion and derp within the millennial generation than I am that it raises real doubts about the poll's methodology and objectivity. So much so that I have a hard time taking its conclusions seriously.
Gee, a libertarian organization produces a poll that shows that even within a generation that is overall liberal in sentiment and that favors government intervention in the economy there is significant support for positions that small government conservatives and right-leaning libertarians persistently advocate. A generation that the right really really wants to win over to its side. What a surprise.
The Social Security System has needed periodic revenue adjustments throughout its history. It kind of goes with the territory when you have that type of program. These used to be totally noncontroversial (Social Security has been the all-time most popular bit of social legislation that the US has ever implemented) until about 20 years ago. Since then every adjustment has been portrayed by the right as evidence that the system is unsustainable.
Which we know is bull. For many decades now (including the present), the SS system has been running a large surplus. It is massively well-funded. It is so flush with money that the rest of the government has been using it as an ATM to help cover <i>its</i> deficits. The rest of the Federal government owes the SS system many billions in what are essentially overdrafts.
But if the SSS every <i>did</i> get into a funding crisis there are easily implemented things that can be done to guarantee its solvency for the far foreseeable future. There have always been arbitrarily-set funding limits that restrict the system&#039;s revenue stream. Tweaking these have been the main method to achieve those adjustments that I mentioned earlier. Primarily this involves either making small tweaks in the payroll deduction or raising the contributions cap by a small amount each generation or so. The present cap in particular is ridiculously low compared to today&#039;s range of income levels. Raising it by a small percentage would guarantee revenue to cover benefits for both Gen X&#039;s and probably the next generation&#039;s retirees. Lifting it all together would unleash a tsunami of revenue that would guarantee the System&#039;s solvency essentially forever.
Despite the line that you, me and everyone else has been fed over the past two decades the Social Security System is in no danger of insolvency for any of us, providing that it continues to be as well-managed as it has been throughout its 79-year existence.
The first part of your comment is the nub of the issue in my opinion. I don&#039;t think that the problem was with the people who were surveyed, but rather with the surveyors. (Especially those who designed it.)
Come on now. It took the better part of a decade for me and my fellow Boomers to get financially on our feet and get our careers in gear after college. We all limped through the seventies on the very same types of minimum-wage jobs that the M&#039;s are struggling through now. (We didn&#039;t have anything close to the same massive level of student debt hanging over us though, although many of us did have some.) We didn&#039;t really come into our own until sometime in the eighties.
To put it bluntly, the present economy absolutely sucks the big one. It has hurt Oldz like me too. I lost my job two weeks after the election in 2008 and haven&#039;t worked since. You cannot put that on the Millennials; you cannot condemn them for having to struggle (as all young people do at first) especially under present conditions. Nobody held my hand or wiped my nose while I was striving to work it out back on the seventies and early eighties, but I did catch a little break or two along the way courtesy of people from my parents&#039; generation. (And if you think that you are having trouble understanding today&#039;s Millennial gen, then I can tell you a few stories about what a <i>real</i> <b>generation gap</b> looks like.) Extending a hand now and then is a normal thing when each new generation reaches adulthood and enters the workforce. Now its our turn to pay forward.
Libertaritards are retards because their derp is way out of fashion. The new derptards of the internet are Neo-Reactionaries, who make Libertarians seem pleasant and well adjusted. Instead of Ayn Rand, they build their political ideas out of Harry Potter books and JRR Tolkein.
I&#039;d be in favor of private retirement accounts, too, IF I was confident that <strike>social security wasn&#039;t going to exist by the time I retire</strike> I was confident the 1% wasn&#039;t going to steal it all the way they are stealing company pensions now.
The problem isn&#039;t convincing them that SS will still exist. The problem is getting them to understand that what Granny Starver Ryan is proposing is taking their SS taxes and letting the same assholes who tanked the markets the last 5 or 6 times play with it until its time to give it back to you. SS reformers all believe that privatizing means they won&#039;t have SS taken out of their checks. It just isn&#039;t going to happen that way. The money will still come out, it will go to private investment firms to be managed, who will all say, &quot;whoopsie, whocouldaknown we would screw you when it came time for you to retire!&quot; Or even better, your boss will say, &quot;sorry, my sincerely held religious belief is that you don&#039;t deserve to EVER retire, and I totally need a spiritual retreat in the Caymans on my private 150 foot yacht&quot;.
Only idiots believe they will get to handle the money in those private retirement accounts.
Except,apparently, for annual vacation.
Speaking for the Boomers: Sorry, we already ate the cake.
Like Borges&#039;s Library of Babel.
Fox News: Oh sure, maybe 66% did say that &quot;raising taxes on the wealthy would help the economy,&quot; but take them away and we still have the 59% who said that &quot;cutting taxes would help the economy.&quot; And that&#039;s a majority, so there!
OK, let&#039;s see here...
The respondents are in favor of reducing regulations, reducing the size of government and cutting government spending by 5%...
while at the same time they want government to provide more assistance to the poor, fund more job training and infrastructure improvements, guarantee educational opportunity and access for everyone (so that college is not just accessible for the wealthy only) and that it acts to reduce homelessness, hunger and poverty in America.
Nope, no contradiction there!
I am less convinced that this provides evidence of confusion and derp within the millennial generation than I am that it raises real doubts about the poll&#039;s methodology and objectivity. So much so that I have a hard time taking its conclusions seriously.
Gee, a libertarian organization produces a poll that shows that even within a generation that is overall liberal in sentiment and that favors government intervention in the economy there is significant support for positions that small government conservatives and right-leaning libertarians persistently advocate. A generation that the right really really wants to win over to its side. What a surprise.
I don&#039;t find these poll results to be at all conclusive. See my comment (way, way) below.
The Social Security System has needed periodic revenue adjustments throughout its history. It kind of goes with the territory when you have that type of program. These used to be totally noncontroversial (Social Security has been the all-time most popular bit of social legislation that the US has ever implemented) until about 20 years ago. Since then every adjustment has been portrayed by the right as evidence that the system is unsustainable.
Which we know is bull. For many decades now (including the present), the SS system has been running a large surplus. It is massively well-funded. It is so flush with money that the rest of the government has been using it as an ATM to help cover <i>its</i> deficits. The rest of the Federal government owes the SS system many billions in what are essentially overdrafts.
But if the SSS every <i>did</i> get into a funding crisis there are easily implemented things that can be done to guarantee its solvency for the far foreseeable future. There have always been arbitrarily-set funding limits that restrict the system&#039;s revenue stream. Tweaking these have been the main method to achieve those adjustments that I mentioned earlier. Primarily this involves either making small tweaks in the payroll deduction or raising the contributions cap by a small amount each generation or so. The present cap in particular is ridiculously low compared to today&#039;s range of income levels. Raising it by a small percentage would guarantee revenue to cover benefits for both Gen X&#039;s and probably the next generation&#039;s retirees. Lifting it all together would unleash a tsunami of revenue that would guarantee the System&#039;s solvency essentially forever.
Despite the line that you, me and everyone else has been fed over the past two decades the Social Security System is in no danger of insolvency for any of us, providing that it continues to be as well-managed as it has been throughout its 79-year existence.
The first part of your comment is the nub of the issue in my opinion. I don&#039;t think that the problem was with the people who were surveyed, but rather with the surveyors. (Especially those who designed it.)
Come on now. It took the better part of a decade for me and my fellow Boomers to get financially on our feet and get our careers in gear after college. We all limped through the seventies on the very same types of minimum-wage jobs that the M&#039;s are struggling through now. (We didn&#039;t have anything close to the same massive level of student debt hanging over us though, although many of us did have some.) We didn&#039;t really come into our own until sometime in the eighties.
To put it bluntly, the present economy absolutely sucks the big one. It has hurt Oldz like me too. I lost my job two weeks after the election in 2008 and haven&#039;t worked since. You cannot put that on the Millennials; you cannot condemn them for having to struggle (as all young people do at first) especially under present conditions. Nobody held my hand or wiped my nose while I was striving to work it out back on the seventies and early eighties, but I did catch a little break or two along the way courtesy of people from my parents&#039; generation. (And if you think that you are having trouble understanding today&#039;s Millennial gen, then I can tell you a few stories about what a <i>real</i> <b>generation gap</b> looks like.) Extending a hand now and then is a normal thing when each new generation reaches adulthood and enters the workforce. Now its our turn to pay forward.
Already there!
Ha, check out Coupland&#039;s <i>Generation X</i> to see identical complaints being made by Gen Xers against the Baby Boom!
Except ours were, you know, legitimate.
Yeah, it&#039;s not even close.
Libertaritards are retards because their derp is way out of fashion. The new derptards of the internet are Neo-Reactionaries, who make Libertarians seem pleasant and well adjusted. Instead of Ayn Rand, they build their political ideas out of Harry Potter books and JRR Tolkein.
I&#039;d be in favor of private retirement accounts, too, IF I was confident that <strike>social security wasn&#039;t going to exist by the time I retire</strike> I was confident the 1% wasn&#039;t going to steal it all the way they are stealing company pensions now.
The problem isn&#039;t convincing them that SS will still exist. The problem is getting them to understand that what Granny Starver Ryan is proposing is taking their SS taxes and letting the same assholes who tanked the markets the last 5 or 6 times play with it until its time to give it back to you. SS reformers all believe that privatizing means they won&#039;t have SS taken out of their checks. It just isn&#039;t going to happen that way. The money will still come out, it will go to private investment firms to be managed, who will all say, &quot;whoopsie, whocouldaknown we would screw you when it came time for you to retire!&quot; Or even better, your boss will say, &quot;sorry, my sincerely held religious belief is that you don&#039;t deserve to EVER retire, and I totally need a spiritual retreat in the Caymans on my private 150 foot yacht&quot;.
Only idiots believe they will get to handle the money in those private retirement accounts.
I can go back to Windows 3.1. I think we survived it because it didn&#039;t do much.
As a millenial, let me be so bold as to speak for my generation: We would like to have our cake and eat it, too, please.