Baby Boomers Suck.

And I'm not afraid to say it. At all.

In fact I'm going to make a blanket statement here, which may offend some, but I'm not going to retract it. Instead I'm going to follow it up with an explanation as to why. Here it goes:

The Baby Boomers of the United States of America royally screwed not only our country, but the entire world.

Wow. Big tough words from a small guy, right? Let me explain and you may end up agreeing.

First I'm going to have to touch on what a Baby Boomer is for those not in the know. The U.S. Census Bureau defines a baby boomer as any individual born between 1946 and 1964. They account for nearly 80 million of our just over 300 million person population, which is roughly a quarter of all living human souls in the United States.

So now that it's defined, what sparked my anger toward them?

TIMING!

It has come to my realization this year that it is just about time for the very first of these individuals to start turning 65. This may seem like a harmless act. After all, in theory all of us are entitled to turn any age we can make it to right? Well it's not the age itself that worries me here. It's what that age entitles.

Social Security is one of those entitlements. Social Security is a system put in place in 1935 by President F.D. Roosevelt and Congress as a part of the New Deal, which is a whole other line of crap that I'll combat at another time and place. At any rate, many of you may have heard that social security is depleting, or failing, or falling apart. And it is. And this is exactly why:

Imagine a system where you have 20 young people and 20 old people, and those 20 young people are forced to pay a portion of their income to help support the 20 older people when they are unable to work and provide for themselves. Now take those 20 young people and imagine that between them they have 60 children. Those 60 children later paying into the fund to support their older parents and some of the surviving generation before that should have no problem right? Right. But now imagine that those 60 people only have 25 children. And when those 60 people get old the 25 children of the previous generation have to pay the same percentage, but instead of 60 shares supporting possibly slightly over 20 people, you now have 25 shares supporting over 60 people.

This is an extremely dumbed down and simplified version of what we're about to face. I've heard about this for years now but I'm only starting to realize the impact that it will have. Because being 65 doesn't just entitle you to SS. It entitles you to other government programs such as medicare.

Which brings me to today. In today's economy we face a multi trillion dollar deficit, unemployment is large and on the rise, companies are cutting hours and positions and costs and in many cases shutting down altogether. Couple that with a multi billion dollar a month war and incredible overinflation of a currency of a proportion never seen in any generation of any country in the entire history of our planet and what do you have?

The U.S. of A!

Our government is completely overspent right now. And I know that's a broad sentence, but I don't think anyone can debate that it's untrue. What's going to happen if 1/4th of the population of America has to draw on government funds for life support when the government's funds are actually in the negative in an epic way? Well they're gonna have to generate revenue somehow. And I don't like the looks of our options.

A very close friend of mine whose opinion I value greatly is fairly suspicious of a possible conspiracy to purposely collapse and rebuild this country under a new order, with a new currency. If you aren't familiar with anything like that just google the NAU and I'm sure you'll come up with some information. Keeping in mind a lot of that is still speculation, I cant say I find it too far-fetched. I mean we live in an age where apparently it's alright to lie about someone possessing weapons of mass destruction to settle a decades old agenda. But that's neither here nor there. Personally, I think that before any collapse and rebuild, and even leading up into those types of events, we're gonna be faced with a tax hike. Possibly a big one. Which means less money in the pocket of the individual.

The republicans will swear up and down that they'll never vote in favor of raising taxes, but there's two reasons I wont listen to them.
1. They don't have the majority in the house, senate, or control of the executive branch
2. I think we all know that when the chips are down to save themselves, any politician on earth is going to vote for what's best for them. Even if it's going to sacrifice some people along the way. It's the human condition.

But this whole thing isn't about whether I like democrats or republicans (I tend not to like either actually).

It's about my disdain for Baby Boomers and why I think they've ruined not only our country, but the entire world.

It's no secret that the baby boom produced the children that grew up to be the bra-burning, protesting, pot smoking hippies of the 60's and 70's. And make fun of them if you will, but they stood for something. Past tense. Stood for something.

What became of the free-spirited earth children? They got older. They settled into jobs. They became the CEO's and Politicians and Wall Street Gurus that they once hated so much. And this is exactly what they are today. They are the Bank CEO's that put out so many sub-prime mortgages and lent and spent money like it was coming from nowhere. They are the war-mongerers and money grubbers who run Capitol Hill. These are the people who run the companies that simultaneously lay off hard workers and then go out and buy new jets for their chief executives to fly in. They are your George W. Bushes and Barack Obamas who print and borrow money for stimulus packages that ultimately inflate our economy more than stimulate it. They are your Dick Cheneys who run two wars in the persian gulf and give all contracts to rebuild Iraq to their own companies (see Haliburton, owned by Dick Cheney).
They are the corrupt, the unjust, and the opposite of everything they once used to be.

They are sellouts. And every man has a price. I cant blame them. They live lavish lifestyles. But at what cost? Well as it stands we've passed $10,000,000,000,000 (that's trillions, friends) in our debt as a country. And as that number continues to climb, so does the age of the ones who helped us dig such a deep hole, and inevitably when they retire, they're going to suck up even more money in government elderly aid programs that we dont have just to support them until they pass.

And it doesn't just affect us. As we speak global economies are crashing. I listen to public news radio to and from work every day. And for at least a half hour every night I check up on my news feeds on the internet. And once you get past the Paris Hiltons and the Lindsey Lohans, you may be scared of what you find. Our debt and destruction as a nation is dragging other countries down with us. Iceland had an over-leveraged economy that has recently crashed and are now being propositioned by the European Union to join for aid purposes. China is having issues with public spending due to weakening of the HKD and are now devising a stimulus package not too far removed from our own. Hell even the Euro's on the downswing.

Dont believe me? Read Forbes. Read any financial review.

The political and monetary devices designed by the demographic of the baby boom have all but bankrupted the individual, the nation and most parts of the world. The Council on Foreign Relations has come out to say that the "U.S. dollar as the world's reserve currency has been an experiment and a historical anomaly." We're a sinking ship and we're dragging the rest of the world down with us.

So what does that mean for the younger generations? What are we supposed to do?

That's impossible for a 22 year old to answer. In fact I sit and think about it sometimes until I upset myself. There are really no ways out until it's our time to run the world I think. So we wait. And we watch it fall. And when it's our turn, we pick up the pieces. We wont be fortunate enough to have the luxuries handed to us that the generation in question did. Instead we'll be the janitors who clean it up, or at least start to, for the next round. There's nothing I hate worse than people who don't have to take any accountability for their actions, but it looks like these guys got to have their cake and eat it too, and we're the ones left with the burden.

Sucks doesn't it?