Why And How The Young Are Screwed
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Last week I read a few lines in a Dutch newspaper article about pensions that immediately took me back to something I wrote in early May about youth u
[See the full post at: Why And How The Young Are Screwed]Has Jay Hanson actually ever seen the mythical creature chomping grass in real life, or he simply read about it in some dead dude’s story book?
Ben said,”No interest raises in the foreseeable future.”
Grandma has not got it easy either with the kids and the grandkids sleeping on the couch.
Ben is still humping her savings.
The money managers are still skimming bonuses and Ben has had to print $3T to cover the short fall, ( and counting).
World wide, I read, that there has been $17T printed to cover the skimming taken by money managers.
I don’t blame the boomers. They never learned math.
I blame those who took the money for their own benefits.WHO has all the money?
I don’t understand you always seem to allude that everything is off into the distant future and that the older generation has got it made…but I see things crashing and no one will be spared…there will be no safe place to hide money….if the “system” fails pensions won’t be safe either…nor will 401k’s.
Screwing the Young
The young will get the short end of the stick
Until they manage to amass some power
Their day will come when oldster all get sick
Their star will rise as boomer prospects sourThe powers that be say something must be done
But this lip service doesn’t yield results
They sacrifice my daughter and your son
To keep their power; Their hubris revultsWe all hold on to what is in our hands
Despite the consequences for the young
And when our wealth slips through like transient sands
Our innocents atone by being hungThe aged beggar youth. Can we not ban it?
Lest heartless fossils vote youth off the planetNice. Stoke the fires of identity politics, when class and inequity are the real foes. If the rising tide of inequity between global elites and the rest of the vast unwashed weren’t happening, this wouldn’t be an issue. The elites thank you for obscuring the issue and helping to break down the social compact that has held humanity together for eons. The adults respect the youth, for they are the future, and they respect the aged, for they are the wisdom and they changed your stinkin’ diapers. Driving a wedge between the youth and elders is a common meme today, but let me be frank.
I got a degree in Chemistry and could have easily taken a job in the private sector, but I elected a job in government, because I saw the writing on the wall of how the ruling class was eviserating and eliminating private sector pensions (which were common up until the Reagan era). Now here I am with savings and no debt, but I can’t get a dime for interest, because of ZIRP, and I’m sure as hell not getting into a rigged market, but you sit there and envy my pittance of a pension and ask me to reduce or do without that? Meanwhile, private jet sales are up, up, up. To hell with that. A deal is a deal. I don’t give a whit which politician was pandering to what demographic for votes in their miscalculations. You are asking to overlook the rule of law, thus you are no better than than the vermin in the FIRE industries that produce nothing and have driven this ship onto a reef.
Your piece misses the point entirely. You ask “If there is simply less to go around than everybody hoped/thought/fooled themselves into thinking there was, something must be taken away from someone. And why must that be the young?” It shouldn’t be the young. It should be the 1%. Period. End of Story. Apparently you prefer to go after grandma and grandpa, rather than those with real power.
BTW I have no children and am glad I didn’t feel compelled to produce progeny, bringing them onto this dying planet. I won’t have anyone to lean on later, and I don’t plan to be a burden on society, but I will be if misguided screeds like this encourage austerity with no accountability among the ruling class.
https://www.truthdig.com/report/item/rise_up_or_die_20130519/
Canadian readers of this blog may be interested in the following post:
One of these days we in Canada really should have an adult conversation about the total government (federal, provincial, and municipal), business, and household debt that is being built up in this country.
The following statistics are taken from a credit market summary data table released yesterday by Statistics Canada: (The link to this data table is at the end of my post.)
The total debt outstanding in Canada at the end of March 2013 (bottom line of the data table) was $5.33 Trillion. From the end of March 2012 to the end of March 2013 the total debt outstanding in Canada increased by $323 Billion. For that 365 day period the total debt outstanding in Canada increased at a rate of $885 Million per day.
From the end of December 2012 to the end of March 2013 the total debt outstanding in Canada (bottom line of the data table) increased by $90 Billion. For that 90 day period the total debt outstanding in Canada increased at a rate of $1 Billion per day.
https://www5.statcan.gc.ca/cansim/pick-choisir?lang=eng&p2=33&id=3780122
green–I’m not sure why you posted a link to Chris Hedges article. He criticizes the corporate-military-industrial structure, especially their assault on the environment. It is their ill gotten gains that are propping up your pension, temporarily.
As the article points out, when you’re done borrowing and spending all the savings of the living, you borrow from the not yet born. When you’re done borrowing American’s savings, you borrow the savings of the rest of the world.
It’s over, man. A trillion was shoved up Saddam’s rear end, a trillion in Afghanistan. A trillion here and a trillion there. All the world’s savings have been used up. It’s nothing personal against you. There’s no savings left to fund a pension system.
Mark T,
Increase in debt by $30 per person per day seems a lot.
I did a quick check on Excel and it seems the greatest increase for the last published quarter was “domestic financial institutions short-term paper” at 15%. By contrast, the biggest important drop was “domestic financial institutions non-mortgage loans” at -6%. I don’t know what that means or signifies.
Well Green you sound like you got it all figured out…..why should “we” take care of you when you are older when “we” are starving. This is the whole point that I think people don’t understand when the system crashes you won’t be sitting in an ivory tower and it won’t matter how many guns etc you have you won’t be an better off than someone with a mortgage and other debt…You are just buying yourself more time. People need to realize we are all in this together not I got mine stay away…I would rather die a free man than a rat in a hole….
Well, Greenfire, what I read in your comment is that you want your pension, even knowing the younger generation, whose own chances of ever getting a pension like the one you want are fast approaching zero, have to pay for it. Fair enough in itself, a choice you make.
Your reasoning is that it’s not the generational drift that wreaks the havoc here (though that by itself doesn’t get the young any closer to getting their pension). In your view, what stands in their way is not the older generation, but the 1%. You want, as far as I can see, for the younger generation to fight the 1% for what’s theirs (a pension, for starters).
My issue with that is that it was your generation that, while building up their pensions (and their homes), allowed that 1% the money and power they have acquired.
And I’m wondering: how is that fair? The older generation have set up things nicely for both themselves and the 1%, and leave the young hung out to dry. If you try to put yourself in their shoes, what would you say they should do?
Everyone looks at this situation like there is going to be a floor….when the bottom drops out that is it…it is like a Jewish person in Germany 1928 buying land to protect themselves from changing times, well that was a bad move because the dynamics changed so dramatically that the bottom was gone….here is an interview with Kyle Bass and I think he gets it he just thinks he will be playing the same game with an advantage..when there is massive destabilization you are not playing with the same rules or in the same game..https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=gJfvLADP3HE#t=1493s
I agree that the youth of today are completely screwed. However, it is not clear to me that it would help the youth if people with pensions/paycheques should simply refuse them. With all of the “excess claims” I’m not sure that this money would end up where it should. I’m also thinking that there would be such a miniscule number of people who would agree to do this, because of high debt levels, that it would make no difference. I agree that this is setting up for a huge intergenerational fight, but I don’t see a way around that.
What should the youth do? I really don’t know. Nicole seems to suggest a few things ( don’t get into debt, don’t buy a house, acquire useful skills (ie carpenter), don’t acquire an expensive education or education leading to a job based on continuation of our highly complex society).
What should the older generation do? I don’t have an answer to this either. Again, I think Nicole suggests some similar things to what is suggested for youth (ie stay out of debt and don’t own a mortgaged house). As long as people are somehow preparing for collapse and intending to help those in their community, I think Nicole would see the continued acceptance of a paycheque of some sort (including a pension?) as being a transfer of wealth from the 1% to the 99%. She has also said at one of her presentations that living in the current economy is quite expensive, such that my sense was that she was not advocating “dropping out” and leaving one’s day job as it were.
I am personally trying to interest the youth in my sphere to come along for the ride to explore the old world of living off of the land, an activity that we have made some progress on. However, there are no takers even among those who are somewhat marginalized in the current economy.
Hi Folks,
If anyone doubts that the ‘parents’ did not have a choice, they should take a look at this by Tim ‘Mac’ Macartney ‘A Line in the Sand’:
[video]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zEssxCSlItw&feature=share[/video]
Its not all up to the young people!
And as for the children:
[video]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1JchSac-VP0[/video]
On the ‘Children’s Fire’ –
“No law, no power of any kind shall be allowed to harm the children!”
The fact is that
“…we have pissed on the children’s fire”.
Why am I here? Is a question that we should all ask ourselves often. Many do not know, this is why they do not know what they are doing. What do you value? What has real value and not just a price? People horde money and possessions, thinking they have value. This happens because they do not know what they are doing. They allow a thousand women and children to die in a building collapse in India to save a few pennies on clothes. Do you think that would happen if they knew what they were doing?
If your value system is corrupted, or worse still is non-existent, then how can you know, ever, what you are doing? Whether it is right or wrong? Most people today are mad; they have the wrong set of values and insanely cling to them – status, power, control and wealth. These are not true values, these are objects of desire and greed. True values are about caring; they are about Love, Compassion, Beauty and Truth. And you cannot charge for them because they are free.
We have a simple choice. Chose to live the right way to live upon this earth, or chose to die.
L,
Sid.I think the mental brainwashing is the worst type of screwing.
Hi Folks,
For those interested in giving feedback on how the site ‘looks and feels’ please go to this thread:
TAE 3.0: What do you want to see?
Thanks,
L,
Sid.Iliargi,
The unspoken premise here is that the growth economy based on fossil fuels is somehow right and proper, but it is not, as you well know from other pieces you have written. There has been a long period of easy wealth. No one here today who is at all responsible for the economic system of today. Almost all economic theory is special pleading designed to justify the position of the wealthy. Setting child against parent is not helpful. The parent should have been earning much more years ago, but instead was bought off by the promise of a pension. But that is too simple a statement of the problem. You have done better.
But I was in a blue funk over what is happening in Egypt, and you roused me to respond, which is good.
https://www.thenation.com/blog/175160/sixty-four-arrested-moral-monday-abortion-access-protest-north-carolina#
Sixty-Four Arrested at ‘Moral Monday’ Abortion Access Protest in North CarolinaFor the past two months, activists in North Carolina have been protesting a bill that could limit abortion access, and more than 700 people have been arrested in the weekly “Moral Monday” protests against the state’s first Republican-led government in more than a century. This Monday, 2,000 people flooded the state capitol in Raleigh, and sixty-four protesters were arrested after refusing to leave the legislative chambers.
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Stay focused.
Important diversions tactics are in play.
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