Reply #5: The purpose of this whole "crisis" is to cheat retirees across the board.

[JDPriestly]

GM's retirees are just an example. Many of us who are about to reach or have just reached retirement age and who had our money in 401(K)s have lost as much as half (for some nearly all) of our retirement money. (Only if you saw the handwriting on the wall and went to cash early are you safe.) It's all been spent on mansions in the Catskills and luxury condos in Manhattan. Too bad for those of us who worked hard and scrimped and saved. Better luck next time, I guess.

This is just the last chapter in the assault on the baby-boomers that started in the baby-boomers' infancy. Remember how Tom Brokaw reminisced so about the "Greatest Generation"? Those were our parents, and some of them resented us from the time we were born. We were born too soon. (The pill had not yet been invented.) There were too many of us. (Not enough housing, too few schoolrooms). We were spoiled. We did not want to fight their dirty war. We were not heroes. We took drugs, wore long hair and no bras. Our parents were shocked. Then, when we grew up and had kids of our own, we were called selfish. And now -- who cares about us? Considering the bad rap we've had all our lives, the smugly wealthy can steal our life savings and pensions with an easy conscience. Good riddance is all we will get.

We were born to parents who had lost their youth and who weren't really ready to be saddled by rug-rats crawling all over them night and day. (Actually, my dad did not fight in WWII, and my parents were very loving, but I saw a lot of anger in the parents of my friends.) We ate a lot. We took up space and cost our parents money. We did not want to fight their dirty war. Some of us took drugs and roamed around pretty aimlessly for a bit (but not most of us if truth were known).

But we were not selfish. We never have been. We have given our children and our parents the best of everything. No generation has lived better than our parents. No generation was given the opportunity our children have been given. Now all we want is to have enough to live on in our old age, and that is to be denied us by the powers that be, by the Paulsons and the Cheneys and their friends on Wall Street, by the Chinese and the Indians and the Colombians who want their share of the pie we put aside for our twilight years.

Between the Paulsons and the Cheneys and the out-sourcers, they haven't even left us any alternatives to pensions and 401(K)s. Just try to get a decent paying job if you are over 55, much less over 60. WalMart greeter, that's about all you are good for.

You see, one of the facts about aging that they don't generally talk about is that many of us get slower -- that is we weaken physically. Some of us find that our hands don't grasp as fast as they used to and are not as strong as they were. That jar that we used to open with one good jerk. Takes two of us to get it open now. Others' can't walk without sharp pain in the knees.

Oh, when it comes to getting jobs, we don't look quite as cute and energetic and enthusiastic as the twenty and thirty somethings. So forget about that fetching first impression. And if you do get a job, don't count on being given the benefit of the doubt as a newbie. Since you look old, you are expected to know everything. The 20-something is cute is she doesn't know what she is doing, but you, you are just stupid.

The theft of our 401(K)s and our pension money. It's the last straw. I don't know if you noticed how many older people were actively campaigning for Obama (and before that Hilary). There's a reason for that. We have a political axe to grind. We want to be given equal opportunity and we are not getting it. We want equal opportunity to grow old in dignity.

Meanwhile in the Third World, the baby boom is raging, producing huge, young, educated populations to work for cheap. That means that the jobs that would have gone to us once our retirement money is gone is being invested in their futures, and the paychecks will be going to them. Never mind that that investment money is the cash we set aside during our working years. It's been laundered via CEO salaries and broker's fees and it's not ours anymore. Wonder what will happen when the baby boomers in the Third World need to retire?