Two years ago, a verminous, abominable media full court press came out of nowhere (but most likely from debt fetishists like Peter G. Peterson) to try to point to seniors and their "greedy" ways, i.e. to grab their "entitlements" as responsible for the predicament of the young Gen Y'ers et al. At the time much was made of the median net worth of the elderly, cited as $170, 494 in several sources, including salon.com and stories in the Associated Press. By comparison, the median net worth of younger households was cited as only $3,662. So hey! Those old farts are getting 47 times more! Unfair! TAKE some $$$ from those old fuckers! YEAH! One smug little asshole named 'KatieKat' actually scribbled on one forum:
"Death will cure this accumulation of wealth by the Boomers. You just have to wait for it."
Not as long as you will have to wait, babe! Because see, we Boomers know how to fight like Tasmanian Devils and take it to the mat, including to our politicos. We also go out and VOTE in numbers that dwarf yours so they dare not fuck with us if they know what's good for them! Never mind, Missus Reality did eventually appear for the sake of KatieKat and her ilk.
According to the poverty figures subsequently released at the time by the U.S. Census Bureau, the percentage of households living in poverty in the 18-64 year range was essentially the same as the percentage of households living in poverty in the 65+ age range (15.2 % and 15.9,%, respectively). In other words, via the choice of a different indicator (the poverty levels for the different demographics), one arrived at a radically different conclusion: that significant segments of BOTH the under and over- 65s are in the shit house!
The above example illustrated that one had to be careful using statistical measures of central tendency. One also had to be careful to appreciate and recognize that the unscrupulous Neoliberal Elites (who all deserve the fate of Marie Antoinette- recalled for her 'Let them eat cake' remark), are waging an information-PR war which aim is to divide young from old. They will resort to any bogus, sliced and diced statistics they can to turn the spotlight of ire away from them! They will also drop any press releases they can, circulating them, to see who will bite and promote their malarkey.
Back then, after many bloggers exposed them they laid low. However, it appears now they are popping up again like rats. They once more are taking aim at the elderly and trying to pin the tail on the "entitlements" and the "greed" of us old farts who won't sacrifice our Social Security or Medicare for the young uns. Well, hey, we'd like to, you know. But with all our health woes, we can't afford to, especially when the medical realm is bloated full of ratfuckers that have it in for all of us, to screw us blind out of our $$$..using the chargemaster.
Anyway, according to Smirkingchimp.com blogger Dean Baker, the new breed of rat is an economist. Well, why am I not surprised? Have I not blogged multiple times that most of them are into the Pareto Distribution, see e..g. http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2011/06/modern-economics-its-evil-basis-pareto.html
and
http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2011/06/modern-economics-its-evil-basis-pareto_13.html
and
http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2011/09/economic-lies-distortions-and.html
Basically the Neoliberal maggots......errrrrr....economists' argument can be summed up thusly: The money of the elderly has far less utility than that of the richest one percent, so we need to make the old bastards either work for it or maybe invest it in the markets and lose it. (In which case they will either have to go back to work at 75 or croak).
Anyway, according to Mr. Baker:
"Because of the dismal labor market few young people have managed to accumulate anything by way of savings for a home or retirement. And many are saddled with large amounts of debt from student loans.
There is no doubt that this is not a pretty picture, but this story has nothing to do with Social Security and Medicare. There is a simple and obvious cause of the dire economic conditions of the nation's young: the downturn created by the collapse of the housing bubble."
But as I noted two blogs ago, the travesty goes beyond even the collapsed housing bubble. It can be laid at the door of rich corporations sitting on $1.7 trillion and farming it out overseas and not investing one buck into this country, to put newly graduated college kids to work! The bastards are hoarding their capital, thanks to laws passed by political whores from both parties, that reward them for doing so. These same corporate CEO parasites are also heavily represented in Peter G. Peterson's 'fix the Debt' gang, check out: www.petersonPyramid.org)
Bottom line: Don't blame us oldsters, but the fucking Peterson crime cronies and vampires sitting on their stash while newly minted grads have to wait tables at Applebee's or go barista at Starbucks. Also thank the punk politicos who passed the laws that allowed this abomination to happen.
As Mr. Baker goes on to note:
"We are now seeing economists joining the crusade to cut Social Security and Medicare by implicitly or explicitly claiming that these programs are somehow responsible for the dismal economic plight of the young. The argument is that we can only free up money for helping our young if we take money from the old, a group with a median income of $20,000 a year."
And what is the truth that these vermin ignore? It's that the upward redistribution of income to the richest one percent in this country " is equal to 10 percentage points of national income or more than $1.3 trillion a year." Add that to the $1.7 trillion stash (or cache) the CEOs helping Peterson are sitting on, and you can see why the young are having it hard.
It's time now for young and old to join forces and take these assholes down one by one, or altogether. We can do it via blogging, but even better ways include aggressive activism and tying up the phone lines of our reps to make them do the right thing for once, for the PEOPLE! Not their goddamned benefactors!
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