0 comment Wednesday, August 27, 2014 | admin
An interesting article about senior citizens being the fly in the 'progressives' ointment.
Are older voters blocking social policy changes?
What this article boils down to is that older Americans are not fully brainwashed in favor of the left's agenda. As some of the posters at AmRen point out this is an echo of what the inaptly-named Mr. Wise said in that infamous rant of his. Old folks are a thorn in the side of the left, and the leftists want oldsters to hurry up and die. I am sure the government-run health ''care'' system will have some solutions to the dilemma, as implied.
It's interesting, this new article, in that it somewhat gives the lie to the frequently-heard complaints from some younger Americans that 'the baby-boomers are a bunch of old hippies who caused all this trouble; they created this mess. They killed America." Actually it seems many younger people on the right agree 100 percent with the leftists who want older people gone. It's often stated in explicit terms.
So the discussion of this article at AmRen is rather uncharacteristic of that place, though post #15 suggests cutting Medicare and Social Security, saying that deep cuts are needed to balance the budget.
I would like to ask the people who often propose this, ''what would you have senior citizens do when you cut Social Security, or take it away altogether as some flatly propose?"
I always wonder if these zealots have living parents and grandparents, and if so, are the old folks independently wealthy and set for life? Can they afford to pay for their own medical care? Can they obtain medical insurance in their old age and with the chronic ailments that accompany old age in many cases?
Honestly, those who bluntly suggest taking an axe to old age benefits, are the ones who give 'conservatism' a bad name, and who give the impression that conservatism=materialism. These kinds of conservatives echo what Ebenezer Scrooge said about 'decreasing the surplus population.'
There are other issues at stake besides 'balancing the budget.' Human life has a value. These 'surplus population' elders are human beings that have made contributions and earned their way for the most part.
We can argue about whether or not FDR should have started Social Security. Probably not, but it's here. It should, in any case, have been limited to the people who had no relatives to help care for them, and no ability to work any longer.
Suppose we stopped Social Security now. It would leave many older people with no income and would likely, given this 'everybody-for-himself' society, result in many senior citizens living in their cars or on the streets. What then? In the name of balancing the budget (which is likely not to happen even with the cuts) we would be creating more homelessness and poverty and misery.
Would these burdensome seniors be conscripted into some kind of volunteerism like the administration threatens to do with young people? What about those too infirm or cognitively impaired to work? Would there be places for them in institutions, which will probably also be cutting their budgets?
As far as paid employment, there is not even enough work for healthy, able, fit young people today, let alone senior citizens who are not desirable employees in the estimate of many employers. So it won't do to just advise the old folks to get off their posteriors and get back to work.
This kind of conservatism is not worthy of that name, seeing, as it does, the older members of society as burdens, too costly and too inconvenient. The people who propose these things are, for practical purposes, on the same side as the leftists, who do not value life as such. They and Ezekiel Emanuel would be de facto allies.
If cutting budgets is to be done, start by limiting Social Security to people with few assets and no other income. Make it means-based. No wealthy or propertied people need to have a social security check. Is that punitive toward the rich? I don't think it is; the better-off people surely should not wish to receive government help; they should be too proud to do so, and should want to pay their own way.
Secondly, we must stop giving benefits like Social Security, SSI, Medicare/Medicaid to non-citizens, or perhaps non-native-born people, even those who are citizens on paper. Give it only to native-born Americans, and those who have lived x number of years in this country, worked, and paid taxes here. Discriminatory? Sure, but so what? The system discriminates now, by age.
This alone would save an enormous amount of money. We all intuitively know that, but even on a 'race-realist' forum like AmRen, there are more people who want to cut off benefits to their own people, than are willing to say 'cut benefits to non-citizens first.' Apparently it is still more acceptable to lambaste your own elders than to criticize foreigners.
But to return to the main point of the linked article, yes, older people (including the much-criticized baby-boomers, my age cohort) are more conservative than is widely believed. We are the last ones to be born into the old America, and the last ones who have a memory of it, who actually lived in it. Once we, and the last-remaining members of the WWII generation are gone, there will be no witnesses left, nobody who experienced America as it once was. All the better for the left when that happens.
Some of my age group -- and even the generation just before mine, the ''silent generation'' did get taken in by the counterculture, but many of us, or most of us, turned back to our roots. Our parents taught us the old beliefs and standards. As Proverbs 22:6 says, ''train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it.''
The older generations are not all drug casualties, old hippies, or mad-dog liberals. There are many of us who were 'trained up' in the way we should go, and we are doing our best to save what little is left of our people. Many of us are doing this for the sake of our children and grandchildren, not for ourselves, because the younger ones are those who will have the hardest future should we fail.
So can't there be a truce between the younger people and the older? We really cannot afford the division and the family conflicts.
Are older voters blocking social policy changes?
What this article boils down to is that older Americans are not fully brainwashed in favor of the left's agenda. As some of the posters at AmRen point out this is an echo of what the inaptly-named Mr. Wise said in that infamous rant of his. Old folks are a thorn in the side of the left, and the leftists want oldsters to hurry up and die. I am sure the government-run health ''care'' system will have some solutions to the dilemma, as implied.
It's interesting, this new article, in that it somewhat gives the lie to the frequently-heard complaints from some younger Americans that 'the baby-boomers are a bunch of old hippies who caused all this trouble; they created this mess. They killed America." Actually it seems many younger people on the right agree 100 percent with the leftists who want older people gone. It's often stated in explicit terms.
So the discussion of this article at AmRen is rather uncharacteristic of that place, though post #15 suggests cutting Medicare and Social Security, saying that deep cuts are needed to balance the budget.
I would like to ask the people who often propose this, ''what would you have senior citizens do when you cut Social Security, or take it away altogether as some flatly propose?"
I always wonder if these zealots have living parents and grandparents, and if so, are the old folks independently wealthy and set for life? Can they afford to pay for their own medical care? Can they obtain medical insurance in their old age and with the chronic ailments that accompany old age in many cases?
Honestly, those who bluntly suggest taking an axe to old age benefits, are the ones who give 'conservatism' a bad name, and who give the impression that conservatism=materialism. These kinds of conservatives echo what Ebenezer Scrooge said about 'decreasing the surplus population.'
There are other issues at stake besides 'balancing the budget.' Human life has a value. These 'surplus population' elders are human beings that have made contributions and earned their way for the most part.
We can argue about whether or not FDR should have started Social Security. Probably not, but it's here. It should, in any case, have been limited to the people who had no relatives to help care for them, and no ability to work any longer.
Suppose we stopped Social Security now. It would leave many older people with no income and would likely, given this 'everybody-for-himself' society, result in many senior citizens living in their cars or on the streets. What then? In the name of balancing the budget (which is likely not to happen even with the cuts) we would be creating more homelessness and poverty and misery.
Would these burdensome seniors be conscripted into some kind of volunteerism like the administration threatens to do with young people? What about those too infirm or cognitively impaired to work? Would there be places for them in institutions, which will probably also be cutting their budgets?
As far as paid employment, there is not even enough work for healthy, able, fit young people today, let alone senior citizens who are not desirable employees in the estimate of many employers. So it won't do to just advise the old folks to get off their posteriors and get back to work.
This kind of conservatism is not worthy of that name, seeing, as it does, the older members of society as burdens, too costly and too inconvenient. The people who propose these things are, for practical purposes, on the same side as the leftists, who do not value life as such. They and Ezekiel Emanuel would be de facto allies.
If cutting budgets is to be done, start by limiting Social Security to people with few assets and no other income. Make it means-based. No wealthy or propertied people need to have a social security check. Is that punitive toward the rich? I don't think it is; the better-off people surely should not wish to receive government help; they should be too proud to do so, and should want to pay their own way.
Secondly, we must stop giving benefits like Social Security, SSI, Medicare/Medicaid to non-citizens, or perhaps non-native-born people, even those who are citizens on paper. Give it only to native-born Americans, and those who have lived x number of years in this country, worked, and paid taxes here. Discriminatory? Sure, but so what? The system discriminates now, by age.
This alone would save an enormous amount of money. We all intuitively know that, but even on a 'race-realist' forum like AmRen, there are more people who want to cut off benefits to their own people, than are willing to say 'cut benefits to non-citizens first.' Apparently it is still more acceptable to lambaste your own elders than to criticize foreigners.
But to return to the main point of the linked article, yes, older people (including the much-criticized baby-boomers, my age cohort) are more conservative than is widely believed. We are the last ones to be born into the old America, and the last ones who have a memory of it, who actually lived in it. Once we, and the last-remaining members of the WWII generation are gone, there will be no witnesses left, nobody who experienced America as it once was. All the better for the left when that happens.
Some of my age group -- and even the generation just before mine, the ''silent generation'' did get taken in by the counterculture, but many of us, or most of us, turned back to our roots. Our parents taught us the old beliefs and standards. As Proverbs 22:6 says, ''train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it.''
The older generations are not all drug casualties, old hippies, or mad-dog liberals. There are many of us who were 'trained up' in the way we should go, and we are doing our best to save what little is left of our people. Many of us are doing this for the sake of our children and grandchildren, not for ourselves, because the younger ones are those who will have the hardest future should we fail.
So can't there be a truce between the younger people and the older? We really cannot afford the division and the family conflicts.
Labels: Baby-Boom Generation, Generational Divide, Intraracial Conflict, Leftism