Are Baby Boomers Being Selfish?

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/03/opinion/letters/are-baby-boomers-being-selfish.html

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To the Editor:

Re “Here’s What We Baby Boomers Owe Our Kids,” by Glenn Kramon (Op-Ed, Oct. 27):

As someone who is grateful to have been born in 1950, I must take issue with Mr. Kramon’s article.

First of all, it is loaded with assumptions about our generation, Medicare and Social Security. These are not “entitlements.” We earned them through many years of hard work. Second, many of us will not enjoy the luxury of retiring early. We are not all former yuppies who are retiring from six-figure salaries. We need an income to get by. He fails to account for an unsteady economy and ever-rising health care and prescription costs.

Contributions to charity and volunteer work on the part of former Silicon Valley professionals are all well and good, but if we are to help younger people succeed and have better lives, we should be working with them for the kind of society that will allow them an equal voice regardless of their place on the economic ladder and ethnicity. We should also be questioning the system that concentrates wealth at the top.

Dana FranchittoSouth Wellfleet, Mass.

To the Editor:

While Glenn Kramon’s sentiments are exactly right — policies and institutions created in another era are not fit for 21st-century demographics — I’d like to make two essential points:

First, his assumptions about how boomers are behaving is out of date: 72 percent of today’s pre-retirees report that they want to work, not retire; 23 percent of new American entrepreneurs are ages 55 to 64. We are already behaving differently from 20th-century retirement norms.

Second, his solutions, while nice, don’t get to the core shift, which is for employers and the rest of us to change our views about welcoming anyone at any age to work.

With 70 percent of Americans’ disposable income held by those over 60, there is a market out there for any product or service for those of us in that age cohort. Yet less than 10 percent of all advertising targets older Americans.

Not costing our children is a good start. But staying a part of the American economic growth story itself is the real change.

Michael HodinNew YorkThe writer is chief executive of the Global Coalition on Aging.

To the Editor:

As an early “boomer,” I don’t recall being part of a “Me Generation.” Our 1950s were awash with our parents’ sense of surviving the horrors of war and deprivation, which instilled a value of hard work. Our 1960s were awash in social progressivism. Our 1970s were awash in economic struggle. And so on.

I think we owe our children a fair understanding that there was not really a Me Generation. That was a fiction of breezy journalism.

But our generation certainly did not match the legislative activism of our parents’ generation. After the horrors of a world war followed by a Cold War, great strides in social legislation were made by our parents’ generation.

Now, we must work with our children to do great things for the sake of great values, without motivation (yet) by a worldwide horror.

Gary E. DavisBerkeley, Calif.

To the Editor:

Glenn Kramon was right on many points, but what struck me most was his noting how Medicare is keeping many of us alive much longer, using funds that two generations ago would have gone to improving the lives and futures of our children and grandchildren.

As a home care physical therapist, I have seen the impact of these extended lives, repeatedly and up close, including the financial, physical, emotional and spiritual costs to the families of people who are living with ever more complex and debilitating illnesses. This crosses all socioeconomic strata. Adult children and even grandchildren everywhere are caring for their elders with love and devotion, but at great personal cost.

If those of us reaching our later years would confront head-on the fact of our eventual deaths, and plan to opt for comfort measures in the face of the late stages of disease (such as cancer, emphysema, heart failure and even dementia), we would reduce the impact that our end-of-life care has on those closest to us. We could leave more resources — time, money, energy — for our loved ones and society at large.

This is not an advocacy of euthanasia, suicide or taking the decision about one’s own medical care from the individual. It is the individual taking personal responsibility, for thinking beyond “me,” and not taking more resources than are due.

Judith UmanskyBaltimore

To the Editor:

Glenn Kramon’s piece on baby boomers reflects a small sector of our generation about which I know nothing except from afar. All of my boomer colleagues and friends had two parents working full or part-time for the past 40-plus years. Mr. Kramon’s reality and his admonitions reflect an isolated experience and view of life, from an ivory tower.

Don’t scold me about accepting my Social Security; I’ve been working since I was 16, as has my spouse. At 71, I am still earning, as are several of my friends. Get out and be with real people.

Linda TiemanUniversity Place, Wash.

To the Editor:

Mr. Kramon, you left one item out: We need to vote in the best interests of our children and grandchildren. We need to vote for candidates who will raise the cap on income subject to Social Security taxes, therefore saving Social Security. We need to vote for candidates who will end the failed war on drugs so that so many young people will not spend years in prison for nonviolent crimes. We need to vote for leaders who will do whatever is necessary to end the greatest threat to humankind: climate change. We need to vote for our children’s future, not our own!

Gregory AdamoBaltimore

To the Editor:

Glenn Kramon offers advice about helping younger people, particularly iGens. He points out that older people are living longer, requiring more health care and getting more from Medicare and Social Security than they put in.

He suggests that older people stay productive, particularly in ways that help younger people, such as coaching students. He also advises donating money in ways that benefit younger people, creating living wills that preclude expensive medical care that won’t make a difference and reminding younger people to vote for people who will represent their interests.

Although these suggestions make sense, they describe individual acts that will likely be overwhelmed by other people not so inclined to change. At least part of the problem (e.g., people receiving more from Medicare and Social Security than they give) is ingrained in our tax code and retirement benefits.

Changes there will require that young people learn the nuts and bolts of these systems, so they can intelligently argue about reasonable options.

William Vaughan Jr.Chebeague Island, Me.

To the Editor:

I really resent Glenn Kramon’s article. Reading it, one would believe that the Social Security and Medicare trust funds have been declared unsustainable and will not be there for future beneficiaries. That’s not what is happening.

The actuaries have given repeated assurances that these programs are sound. More recently, a shortfall has been projected. We have been assured that relatively modest adjustments would cure these shortfalls. I have a right to believe what I am told, and to expect that appropriate adjustments will be made. They have not been made because Republicans in Congress want to strangle the programs.

I have done my part by paying taxes to sustain payments of anticipated benefits. If Mr. Kramon wants to go on a guilt trip, he can do so, but he is dead wrong that our generation shirked its responsibilities, and, frankly, I am getting tired of listening to this nonsense.

Robert MillsapWoodland, Calif.