I'm not sure that Social Security and the like for older people is such a bad thing, it seems logical. You can't expect people to work in old age and nobody would want to insure their healthcare without government support. Young people have their youth, energy and the ability and time to work for themselves and save money. Old people do not. I see nothing extravagant about the size of SS payments. Medicare does need to be reigned in, of course. I would say add asset tests to SS, but those are so easily skirted that they'd be unenforceable.
The real ripoffs of the young generation:
* The cost of education caused by free-flowing credit to students
* Housing price inflation by foreign and domestic cash investors, mortgage tax deductions, 30-year mortgages, federal reserve actions creating asset bubbles (not US exclusive, in fact the problem is worse in commonwealth countries like Australia thanks to negative gearing and lack of property taxes)
* Obscenely low taxes on wealth and capital gains
* Absurd amount of defense spending
Young people also bear responsibility to:
* Manage money better
* Live within means
* Encourage discussion of serious issues like those above on social media without being labeled as "crazy" for doing so; stop sharing useless BuzzFeed garbage and burying yourselves in Instagram all the time.
* Stop going so far in debt for clearly useless degrees and then wondering why the world is so unfair when you can't make money with it
* Don't glorify urban living to a fault, blowing money at bars for binge drinking well after college, spending too much on rent to be in a "trendy" area. You shouldn't have an iPhone, iPad, and MacBook and spend $1500/mo to live with 4 roommates, latte for breakfast ($4), buy all your lunches ($10), get dinner at the Whole Foods hot bar ($15) when you make $40k, then complain when you're 30 with a negative net worth!
The real ripoffs of the young generation:
* The cost of education caused by free-flowing credit to students
* Housing price inflation by foreign and domestic cash investors, mortgage tax deductions, 30-year mortgages, federal reserve actions creating asset bubbles (not US exclusive, in fact the problem is worse in commonwealth countries like Australia thanks to negative gearing and lack of property taxes)
* Obscenely low taxes on wealth and capital gains
* Absurd amount of defense spending
Young people also bear responsibility to: * Manage money better
* Live within means
* Encourage discussion of serious issues like those above on social media without being labeled as "crazy" for doing so; stop sharing useless BuzzFeed garbage and burying yourselves in Instagram all the time.
* Stop going so far in debt for clearly useless degrees and then wondering why the world is so unfair when you can't make money with it
* Don't glorify urban living to a fault, blowing money at bars for binge drinking well after college, spending too much on rent to be in a "trendy" area. You shouldn't have an iPhone, iPad, and MacBook and spend $1500/mo to live with 4 roommates, latte for breakfast ($4), buy all your lunches ($10), get dinner at the Whole Foods hot bar ($15) when you make $40k, then complain when you're 30 with a negative net worth!