Should we Care About Boomer Social Security?

My position is that the baby boomers kept their own income taxes down during their working lives and lived off their own Social Security surplus instead of using that money in a way that would provide income in the future. To fix this they are going to increase the taxes on our children to pay back funds that were used for general fund daily operations of the government. For example, bonds for the Hoover Dam would be a good use of surplus Social Security money. Buying B-1 bombers is not. The difference is that once the Hoover Dam was built it will be used for generations. Military hardware will continue to be needed to be replaced, used, and funded. Our kids won't have to replace the Hoover Dam, while still paying for the last one.

The issue of long term funding of SS is not new, and they had plenty of time to fix it. It is pretty much my same opinion on Medicare prescriptions, where the boomers did not give it to their parents, but want us to give it to them. The bubble has been screwing our economy for a long time.

Boomers as a group have in fact been the dominant political group involved in all decisions of the past 3 decades involving taxes. When they started investing in the stock market, they voted for policies that reduced corporate tax. As they aged and amassed wealth, they reduced taxes on the wealthy. When they started to see old age coming, they voted for a massive expansion of Medicare. I don't think it is a coincidence that those changes followed the demographics of the generation.

The point is that "the Boomer" spent his entire working career paying less income tax to the government to pay for the services delivered because the government was borrowing the money from Social Security instead. That money is due back to the system, and will be paid back by the children of boomers. So the Boomers used their Social Security trust fund to pay for the life style they enjoyed while working, and will now have their children pay for their retirement.

The money borrowed from Social Security to benefit the future and pay for things that will still be around for the children to use is reasonable and the only thing that should be done with that money, since it could not just sit there, and it is too vast an amount of money to invest in the stock market. That is not what occurred. Instead, it was borrowed to pay for day-to-day living, not unlike using credit cards to pay for groceries. When you are later paying the bill for last month's groceries on your credit card, you still need to pay for groceries today. If the SS surplus had been used properly, we would not have crumbling infrastructure in America, and either the income tax rate would have been higher, or the boomers would have less government services.

The boomers spent the majority of their retirement trust fund on "daily expenses," and now want their kids to pay it back, while the kids are still responsible for their own "daily expenses," and their own retirements.

I agree that not all individual Boomers are culpable personally, but they are as a group.