Baby Boomers: "An Audience That Has Assets, Not Allowances"

You have old balls and loose skin.

In every system of morality, which I have hitherto met with, I have always remark’d, that the author proceeds for some time in the ordinary ways of reasoning, and establishes the being of a God, or makes observations concerning human affairs; when all of a sudden I am surpriz’d to find, that instead of the usual copulations of propositions, is, and is not, I meet with no proposition that is not connected with an ought, or an ought not. This change is imperceptible; but is however, of the last consequence. For as this ought, or ought not, expresses some new relation or affirmation, ‘tis necessary that it shou’d be observ’d and explain’d; and at the same time that a reason should be given; for what seems altogether inconceivable, how this new relation can be a deduction from others, which are entirely different from it.

Well, since we can’t young’uns can’t fund your collective retirement for much longer, I guess you’ll have to go to the Chinese to get even more loans so you can buy medicine and pet cougars and shit.

Also, remember in that movie that SPOILER ALERT Clint ends up bleeding to death on a Detroit sidewalk. Which is, like, totally metaphorical.

50

Yes, my purchases are up over the last 6 months. Because I had been such a cheap bastard.

Being a boomer is cool, and all, but a boomer still working is a pitiful thing, says this still working boomer.

Baby Boomers ruined America.

They started the downward spiral that has resulted in our bling worshiping, Trans-Fat ingesting, Paris Hilton Buttfuck video watching, No PE having, self-involved faux persona social networking, soulless society that we live in today.

I’ll take the “Greatest Generation” any day.

The last generation that worked, understood sacrifice, and didn’t measure their self worth with their car, McMansion, or wife’s bolt on rack.

I invite The American Dream to expand these thoughts in a guest post. Or to send me more Paris Hilton video. Or both.

I think he meant Perez Hilton.

I’d vote for the “Greatest Generation,” in this debate, but they wouldn’t let me.

srr50:
 
Moving beyond the generational wrangling above, I do think you have a good point. Boomers still have cash and as many are nearing or at retirement, they are going to be looking for leisure and amusement. It stands to reason that the blogosphere will be one area that sees their impact: in sports, travel, politics, entertainment.
 
It may be Gen Xers providing the content, but a significant (and often silent) portion of their audience is the Boomer generation.
 
So it’s crucial that I work in as many references to hula hoops, phone booth stuffing, Wavy Gravy, Spiro Agnew, and fondue pots as possible.

I do agree with folks down on the boomer generation. If someone wrote the book “The Worst Generation”, it would be about our parents and srr50. I’d buy the book and have my children and their children read it and understand how one group of people can truly and completely fuck up a really good thing. The absurdity to me is the braggadocio with which they present themselves, as well.

And, srr50, Gen Y views it as an affront on humanity that you ignored them. They’re now going to refuse to read any further until you apologize, tell them they’re special, and ask for their forgiveness.

fucking boomers. Pissed all over our grandparents in the sixties and are going to piss all over their kids when they bankrupt social security.

And their grand kids? The “Millenials”? They suck just as bad. Bunch of overeducated, over medicated prima donnas that can’t complete a task without asking a million questions and having their hand held.

It’s no surprise all the Gen X’ers I know identified with their Grandparents more than their parents.

As a proud member of the HS graduating class of ‘69 and as a new enrollee at UT (didn’t need to designate ‘Austin’ back then) in the fall of that year, I was entitled to:

1. Have multiple unofficial HS mottos that still are hugely more cool than any other year.

2. Be the first group to live in Jester. Yes, it sucked at the time, but I can tell you that M266 will never be the same. Also the ‘Jester Food Riots’ of that fall.

3. Smoking my first dope between 1st and 2nd base on old Clark Field while watching the rock concert starring It’s A Beautiful Day and Pacific Gas and Electric.

4. Two different first-run movie houses right on the drag, the Varsity and something else that I forget.

5. The Bucket, Waterhole #3, The Hungry Horse, The Jade Room, the real Louie’s, The Flagon and Trencher, The Pink Lizard, and of course, The Orange Bull with their $1.25 pitchers of Schlitz and Bud.

6. Of course, the only ID required by any of those places was the ‘orange ID’ which showed you were a UT student and not some Billy Bergstrom or HS dork.

7. Janice Joplin @ the real Threadgill’s.

8. The Vulcan Gas Company right down on Congress.

9. The Game of the Century

10. And oh yeah, that little NC thingy that year.

As Johnny Winter would say, ‘Does that get it or what?’

Terminal Velocity

By Jim Anderson, President, SVB Analytics

In my youth I was a skydiver. One of the basic concepts of physics that becomes important when you jump out of an airplane at 8,000 feet is the difference between speed and acceleration. A falling body accelerates at 32 feet per second per second (a=32 ft/s2). After about six seconds a human in the classic arch position will hit a terminal velocity of 120 miles per hour. At that point acceleration, which measures the change in velocity from moment to moment (or more properly the second derivative of the time and distance curve), is zero. Speed will remain constant unless something interferes such as some interaction with a fixed object. But as we joked around the drop zone with new jumpers, “Remember, nothing really bad can happen until you get close to the ground.”

So it is that economists are now focused on the “second derivative” of GDP growth. As Bernanke announced this past week, “We have seen tentative signs that the sharp decline in economic activity may be slowing.” In short, the second derivative is positive in that the economy is still in decline, but at a slower pace than before. Well, this is good news. Other measures are also beginning to show that our falling body of an economy is reaching its terminal velocity.

The Institute for Supply Management (ISM) indexes have settled in a certain range. According to ISM Reports, “the rapid decline in manufacturing appears to have moderated somewhat, as the Purchasing Managers Index (PMI) remains in the mid-30s for a third consecutive month.” The far more important ISM Non-Manufacturing Index is hanging in the low 40s. It is critical to note that these are diffusion indexes, which means any number under 50 shows that the sector is shrinking. So the increasing pace of decline may have stopped, but they are still in decline. We’ve reached terminal velocity.

The bigger question is whether consumers have a sense of the second derivative effect. Last week the Michigan Consumer Sentiment Index inched up to 57.3 from 56.3. This is certainly good news, but remember that a good number is in the 90s. So consumers are no longer getting more depressed. Perhaps they have had time to take stock of their circumstances and have formed a new picture of the future. They are not happy about it, but at least they are no longer reacting to the fear and panic so foolishly promulgated by our political class in the first quarter.

Asked recently what advice she would give to consumers, The Chair of President Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers Dr. Christina Romer stated incongruously that they should consider buying a new car. (Is this because the Feds are now in the car business?) Happily, we think most people will ignore her.


Source: Federal Reserve/SVB Analytics
click for full version
The big picture for consumers is depicted in the chart nearby. Household net worth actually peaked at $64.4 trillion in 2007 and then it collapsed to $51.5 trillion 18 months later. That is a 20 percent decline with, shall we say, rapid acceleration. The rich really took it on the chin with more than 45 percent of millionaires reporting declines in net worth exceeding 30 percent.

There is good evidence that consumers are focused on that $12.9 trillion loss of net worth. They are plotting out how to repair their balance sheets by saving. The savings rate peaked at 7.6 percent in 1992, then dropped to essentially zero by 2005. Now that the fat times are over, some estimates show that people will save 6–10 percent of their disposable income going forward. Since consumers contribute about 68 percent of GDP, a 10 percent savings rate means consumer spending will be about $1 trillion less than the levels observed in 2006-2007. At that pace of savings, baring a resurgence in house prices or a rebound in the stock market, it will take more than 10 years to return to pre-2008 levels of wealth. Maybe this is what people mean when they talk about Japan’s lost decade.

We are supremely confident that U.S. households can do this. The baby boomer generation was (and still is) the first at work in the mornings and the last to leave at night. They worked an astounding 20 percent more hours per year on average than their parents. So now, bolstered by all manner of new health care anti-aging drugs, they can easily keep working 10 or 15 years past a normal retirement age.

Oddly, as consumers are accepting the need for austerity, saving, paying down debt and working to ensure the future for their children, their government is doing the exact opposite. The trillion dollars per year in additional savings by individuals will be almost perfectly offset by the same amount in continuing $1 trillion deficits at the federal level. As the average household adds $115,000 to their net worth from savings in the next ten years, they will also be saddled with a like amount of government debt to pay. Net savings in our over-levered economy will be zero.

This rising debt will also shine a spot light on that mother of all Ponzi schemes — the Social Security Administration. Next year the annual receipts from payroll taxes will fail to cover benefits for the first time in years. The system is forecast to be in deficit from here on. Unfortunately, the “surpluses” from prior years have been traded to the Feds for a pile of IOUs. Pensioners can be forgiven for wondering how they will redeem those markers with a government that is $1 trillion in the hole every year.

All these added burdens will eventually turn up in significantly higher tax rates for all Americans, not just those greedy rich folks. It is perhaps the totality of this depressing calculus that inspired the grass roots tax rebellion demonstrations last week. As the boomers slave away in their struggle to rebuild their savings and bail out their profligate government, they need to remember, “Nothing really bad can happen until you get close to the ground.”

“It’s no surprise all the Gen X’ers I know identified with their Grandparents more than their parents.”

There can be no other explanation for my love of Srr50’s writing.

Well done btw Srr50. I mean for a doddering, helpless old fuddy-duddy whose relevance eclipsed with the “Rubber Soul” album. Now if you’ll excuse me I have to go re-hairspray my feauxhawk.

http://www.superseventies.com/worstgen.html

The Worst Generation by Paul Begala

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