One-sided conversations

Why is it that the “honest conversation” we are all supposed to be having never includes OUR voices?

We live in a world where plutocrat front men get to propose the most horrific attacks on the ordinary people of America using major national megaphones and then the friends of the working class, filled with dread, sputter their outrage on blogs read by dozens.

Yesterday I noted Riverdaughter’s reaction to Robert J. Samuelson’s latest: On Medicare and Social Security, be unfair to the boomers

I received my Medicare card the other day, recognizing my 65th birthday and making me part of one of America’s biggest problems. By this, I mean the burden that the massive baby-boom generation will impose on its children and the nation’s future. There has been much brave talk recently, from Republicans and Democrats alike, about reducing budget deficits and controlling government spending. The trouble is that hardly anyone admits that accomplishing these goals must include making significant cuts in Social Security and Medicare benefits for baby boomers.

Um, no. We’ve already taken the hit. As RD noted:

In the 1980′s, the tail end of the baby boom generation, that would be people like *me*, were assured by the Reagan Administration that if we accepted higher payroll taxes on our minute, nascent post college salaries, we would be paying for our future social security benefits that required a surplus fund “because we are too menny”.  Is this not true, Robert?  We’ve already made our sacrifice.   We were promised that if we deferred our compensation, it would be there when it was time to retire.  If it is not there and we are asked to take a cut in future benefits, that would be equivalent to imposing a significant extra tax over the past 30 years on those of us in the younger cohort of the babyboom generation because people like Robert and David Broder and Sally Quinn liked their Bush era tax cuts.  Robert has a lot of nerve lecturing us about unfairness.

Oh my, this “take it on the chin, boomers” meme is cropping up all over.

What planet do they live on?

Yet, the gist of Friedman’s argument seems to be that one generation needs to suck it up in order to make things nice for the next one.

Ahem. Excuse me. For all the vilification of the Boomer generation, it might be worth remembering that our work is paying for our parents’ benefits as well as our own. The problem isn’t “us”. The problem is the seismic shift in where the nation’s wealth lies. So when I read platitudes like this, they leave me a bit speechless.

In a recent address, Reed elaborated: “The bottom line is that for the country to do and to be what we have been … there must be a generation tough enough to stick out its chin and take the hit. … It is time to begin having the types of mature and honest conversations necessary to deal effectively with the new economic realities we are facing as a nation. We simply cannot keep kicking the can down the road.”

See? There it is again. That whole “honest conversation” thing again. Really, it’s what John said, and which I echo: F&ck that. Talk to me about sticking out my chin when you take care of the fat cats’ double chin, especially while sitting in the comfort of your “palatial 11,400-square-foot house, currently valued at $9.3 million, on a 7½-acre parcel” in Bethesda, Maryland, with your heiress wife. Until then, screw your mature and honest conversations.

Tom Coburn Preaches Austerity For Thee, But Not For He: Cut spending or face ‘apocalyptic pain’

Holy Flying Spaghetti Monster on a popsicle stick, what does Coburn think it’s like now for the 99ers (who have been forgotten by Congress) and the exponentially growing number of people are on government assistance, more now than ever before? A frickin’ picnic? There’s a whole lot of pain out there, Senator, exacerbated by you and your party’s INSISTENCE that the wealthiest 2% keep paying Bush era tax rates. Talk to me about austerity and pain when EVERYONE in this country feels it as bad as the neediest. C&L commenter Wilbur1 put it astutely in Karoli’s earlier post on Tom Friedman’s similar calls for austerity:

What he is calling for is generational theft. His parents weren’t GIVEN a god damn thing. They fought for what they got and they paid much higher taxes, had far more constricted trade and finance, had more social programs handled by the government and a wider safety net than we do. They were handed a good country and made it better. When it came time to pay for that society they did. Now, Friedman and his generation comes along and when it is time for them to pay, to pass on to the next generation a good educational system, health care system, etc, they refuse. They’ve destroyed everything with their nihilistic materialism. They refuse to pay higher taxes, allow for inequitable trade, financial and tax deals, allow for economic exploitation and greed to dominate the economy and here we are. They have made every single part of our society worse and are now saying to us that we better not dare hold them accountable. We better not let billionaires who couldn’t posisbly “earn” that much money (it isn’t possible to earn that much money, you must obtain that money by monopolizing someone else’s work in some way or creating debt that adds nothing to the world) pay for money they didn’t earn. It’s not even let them eat cake. It’s denying that cake exists, that he and his parents had plenty of it when he was younger but now he’s grown, fat. and its all gone. He’s telling them to eat paper.

Why is it that “honest conversation” always means we are expected to give up even more than we already have? We’ve already got stagnant wages (if we’ve got wages at all), but our living expenses continue to rise. Our medical insurance keeps costing more and buying less (if we’ve got insurance at all).  We’ve endured layoffs, furloughs, pay cuts, and more. And still, “they” keep telling us, “You’re just going to have to suck it up. Again.”

Fuck that.

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