WTF!?!: The Shafting of my Generation

[CaptinPickAxe]

http://money.cnn.com/2005/02/02/retirement/stofunion_socsec/index.htm

for real...

[Ford Prefect]

I'm relatively young as well, but it's been known for a while that social security is in serious trouble and needs major reform. All Bush laid out was what HE wanted to do with it. Any idea will need major support no matter where it comes from. His ideas are extremely far from even being close to being put into effect.

[GLW]

Self- fulfilling prophesies are such fun...

You say that "Social Security is in big trouble. It will go bankrupt by year XXXX."

Then, you put together a plan to take money OUT of a system that you claim is broken, incurring a LARGE debt in the process...and

Lo and behold...

Social Security does indeed go belly up...due to the removal of funds.

Barnum would have loved this one.

I love the way the baby is sailing through the air with the bathwater.

[Shaolinlueb]

actually you are guarenteed 81% or soemthing of all the money you put into SS. so it wont really go belly up. you are being told lies.
at least thats what i read somewhere from the democrats.

[Ford Prefect]

That's the thing. Go back even 5 years and listen to what democrats AND republicans were saying about SS, and you'd find both parties saying it is in serious trouble. I used to be a staunch democrat in my formative years and even then everything I heard from democratic leaders about SS was about how the system won't be around by the time I retire because it's in such trouble. Everybody has been saying that for years. Flash forward a few years and they are like "Huh? SS? Naw. It's doing wonderfully!" Until they actually explain their position and the reason for the complete 180, I'll have to say they are 100% full of it.

[red5angel]

at least thats what i read somewhere from the democrats.

LOL!

[Ford Prefect]

President Clinton: “If You Don’t Do Anything, One Of Two Things Will Happen. Either It Will Go Broke And You Won’t Ever Get It, Or If We Wait Too Long To Fix It, The Burden On Society … Of Taking Care Of Our Generation’s Social Security Obligations Will Lower Your Income And Lower Your Ability To Take Care Of Your Children To A Degree That Most Of Us Who Are You Parents Think Would Be Horribly Wrong And Unfair To You And Unfair To The Future Prospects Of The United States.” (President Bill Clinton, Remarks At Georgetown University, Washington, DC, 2/9/98)

President Clinton: “And Above All, To My Fellow Baby Boomers, Let Me Say That None Of Us Wants Our Own Retirement To Be A Burden To Our Children And To Their Efforts To Raise Our Grandchildren. It Would Be Unconscionable If We Failed To Act, And Act Now, As One Nation Renewing The Ties That Bind Us Across The Generations.” (President Bill Clinton, Remarks To A National Forum On Social Security, Kansas City, MO, 4/7/98)

Clinton Press Release on Social Security being in trouble: http://clinton4.nara.gov/WH/New/html/19981030-27521.html

http://www.nationalreview.com/york/york200501140807.asp

Democratic leaders rallied around this cry which had been going on for some time. Were they frauds at the time and now it's the republicans turn? I dunno. Going by how they changed their tune on Saddam, it's a definate possibility.

[count]

I'm sorry my young friends. It's my generation who was forced to put money into this system for 30 years that will be getting the shaft.

GW said in 1977 that Social Security would be bankrupt by 1988 and pushed for privatization. If they would just quit raiding it to support their massive deficits and pork packed budgets, it would be fine. The real joke is the White house line that shortfalls and deficits as the status quo are unacceptable. LOL. What a group of hypocrites. I got a clue for ya'll. You're being sold another bill of goods to support the corporate interests. How many time can you believe the sky is falling before you look for yourself. Wake up and take responsibility for yourselves. They can't even bring themselves to call it "private accounts". They are marketing them as "personal accounts". If that's what you want, get one.

Remember Enron!

Remember Enron!

Remember Enron!

Remember Enron!

Remember Enron!

Remember Enron!

Remember Enron!

Remember Enron!

Remember Enron!

Remember Enron!

Remember Enron!

There were no weapons of mass destruction!

[Water Dragon]

Quit whining people.

First, you don't put your money "in" to Soacial Security and spend it later. The people working today pay for the people who are retired. When we are retired, the people working then will pay for us.

Secondly, Social Security was never set up to give people a long or good retirement. It was a part of the reforms in the 1930's. In the '30;s when the benefit age was set at 65, Life expecatancy was about 70.

To be fair, Social Security shouldn't even kick in now until about age 80-85.

Social Security works if used as intrnded, it's the citizens who have broken it, as usual.

[Shaolinlueb]

plus their are more old people right now then there are young people correct?

[count]

Originally posted by Water Dragon
Quit whining people.

First, you don't put your money "in" to Soacial Security and spend it later. The people working today pay for the people who are retired. When we are retired, the people working then will pay for us.

Secondly, Social Security was never set up to give people a long or good retirement. It was a part of the reforms in the 1930's. In the '30;s when the benefit age was set at 65, Life expecatancy was about 70.

To be fair, Social Security shouldn't even kick in now until about age 80-85.

Social Security works if used as intrnded, it's the citizens who have broken it, as usual.

The promise of Social Security is put your money in and when you get old, the workers will be putting money into the system. Why else would our fathers or grandfathers put money into it? Now I'm supposed to pay some 2 trillion dollars more of my money to dismantle the system I supported for 30 years so kids can gamble on the stock market? WTF!?!

[Ford Prefect]

Count, it's time for your medication.

Water Dragon, It doesn't matter what it was originally intended to be. Income tax was intended to be a temporary tax and a tax on government employees only... Do you need to be told what it has become. Welfare was intended to help the wives and widows of WW2 soldiers... look at what it is now. The thing is that what they have become is completely necessary to support our current way of life with a strong military and social programs. The same can be said with social security and many other programs and laws in this country. People count on those checks because that is what it has morphed into. You can't just say "tough $hit. read the law" and tear their checks up.

It's really simple. The retired people will eventually outnumber those who are putting money into their retirement. The money has to come from somewhere, so either benefits will be cut or taxes will be raised. Neither is acceptable, IMO.

[Ming Yue]

Every year taxpayers pay in payroll taxes, and the federal government doesn't have to pay out as much in benefits as it gets. That surplus goes into a trust fund:

http://www.ssa.gov/OACT/STATS/table4a3.html

The government spends the surplus on other things and puts back an I.O.U. That I.O.U. is backed by the "full faith and credit of the United States government". It has legal, political, and moral significance. But it has no economic significance whatsoever.

In order to pay off those I.O.U.'s the federal government is either going to have to increase revenues, cut other spending, or borrow more from the public. One of those has to happen.

Based upon the latest best estimates of the Social Security trustees, the trust fund (currently 1.6 billion, but heavily and consistently borrowed against for other government expenses)will go to zero in 2042, which means if no changes are made, and if that date turns out to be an accurate prediction, then sometime during that year an individuals benefits will be cut by 27 percent all at once.

They'll go from getting a dollar for each dollar of promised benefits to 73 cents for each dollar of promised benefits.

Less social security for sure, but it won't go broke.

[TaiChiBob]

Greetings..

First, we have earned the money that is "taxed" in the name of Social Security.. Second, a "tax" has no "rights" asociated with it.. the government does, however, create a false impression that "our" money will "be there when we need it".. the simple fact is this, people will do what is necessary to survive.. if their survival is compromised due to mismanagement of their earned money in "tax" accounts (Social Security), then crime will explode and revolt will be a popular option.. or, we can just watch as our fellow citizens suffer and die while we chant "you should have worked harder, you should have known better".. we will all do what is necessary WHEN it becomes necessary..

Be well..

[MasterKiller]

To make our economy stronger and more competitive, America must reward, not punish, the efforts and dreams of entrepreneurs. Small business is the path of advancement, especially for women and minorities, so we must free small businesses from needless regulation and protect honest job-creators from junk lawsuits. (Applause.) Justice is distorted, and our economy is held back by irresponsible class-actions and frivolous asbestos claims -- and I urge Congress to pass legal reforms this year. (Applause.) Guess which oil giant had to shell out recently for the largest asbestos claim in history...Go on....guess. You know you want to.

[BAI HE]

The Iceberg Cometh
Comments (30)

SYNOPSIS:

Last week someone leaked a memo written by Peter Wehner, an aide to Karl Rove, about how to sell Social Security privatization. The public, says Mr. Wehner, must be convinced that "the current system is heading for an iceberg."

It's the standard Bush administration tactic: invent a fake crisis to bully people into doing what you want. "For the first time in six decades," the memo says, "the Social Security battle is one we can win." One thing I haven't seen pointed out, however, is the extent to which the White House expects the public and the media to believe two contradictory things.

The administration expects us to believe that drastic change is needed, and needed right away, because of the looming cost of paying for the baby boomers' retirement.

The administration expects us not to notice, however, that the supposed solution would do nothing to reduce that cost. Even with the most favorable assumptions, the benefits of privatization wouldn't kick in until most of the baby boomers were long gone. For the next 45 years, privatization would cost much more money than it saved.

Advocates of privatization almost always pretend that all we have to do is borrow a bit of money up front, and then the system will become self-sustaining. The Wehner memo talks of borrowing $1 trillion to $2 trillion "to cover transition costs." Similar numbers have been widely reported in the news media.

But that's just the borrowing over the next decade. Privatization would cost an additional $3 trillion in its second decade, $5 trillion in the decade after that and another $5 trillion in the decade after that. By the time privatization started to save money, if it ever did, the federal government would have run up around $15 trillion in extra debt.

These numbers are based on a Congressional Budget Office analysis of Plan 2, which was devised by a special presidential commission in 2001 and is widely expected to be the basis for President Bush's plan.

Under Plan 2, payroll taxes would be diverted into private accounts while future benefits would be cut. In the short run, this would worsen the budget deficit. In the long run, if all went well, cutting benefit payments would reduce the deficit.

All wouldn't go well; I'll explain why in another column. But suppose that everything went according to plan. Even in that unlikely case, privatization wouldn't even begin to reduce the budget deficit until 2050. This is supposed to be the answer to an imminent crisis?

While we waited 45 years for something good to happen, there would be a real risk of a crisis - not in Social Security, but in the budget as a whole. And privatization would increase that risk.

We already have a large budget deficit, the result of President Bush's insistence on cutting taxes while waging a war. And it will get worse: a rise in spending on entitlements - mainly because of Medicare, but with a smaller contribution from Medicaid and, in a minor supporting role, Social Security - looks set to sharply increase the deficit after 2010.

Add borrowing for privatization to the mix, and the budget deficit might well exceed 8 percent of G.D.P. at some time during the next decade. That's a deficit that would make Carlos Menem's Argentina look like a model of responsibility. It would be sure to cause a collapse of investor confidence, sending the dollar through the floor, interest rates through the roof and the economy into a tailspin.

And when investors started fleeing because they believed that America had turned into a banana republic, they wouldn't be reassured by claims that someday, in the distant future, privatization would do great things for the budget. Just ask the Argentines: their version of Social Security privatization was also supposed to save money in the long run, but all it did was move forward the date of their crisis.

A responsible administration would reverse course on tax cuts and the botched 2003 Medicare drug bill, both of which pose much greater threats to the government's solvency than the modest financial shortfall of the Social Security system. But Mr. Bush has declared his tax cuts inviolable, and he says that his drug bill will actually save money. (The Medicare trustees say it will cost $8 trillion.)

There's an iceberg in front of us, all right. And Mr. Bush wants us to steam right into it, full speed ahead.


Originally published in The New York Times, 1.11.05

[count]

Originally posted by Ford Prefect
Count, it's time for your medication.

OK, fire it up Bro'!



You can't just say "tough $hit. read the law" and tear their checks up.



No more than I can stop paying income tax and say read the law. They may have the guns but we have the masses.

[BAI HE]

The British Evasion
Comments (53)

SYNOPSIS:

We must end Social Security as we know it, the Bush administration says, to meet the fiscal burden of paying benefits to the baby boomers. But the most likely privatization scheme would actually increase the budget deficit until 2050. By then the youngest surviving baby boomer will be 86 years old.

Even then, would we have a sustainable retirement system? Not bloody likely.

Pardon my Britishism, but Britain's 20-year experience with privatization is a cautionary tale Americans should know about.

The U.S. news media have provided readers and viewers with little information about how privatization has worked in other countries. Now my colleagues have even fewer excuses: there's an illuminating article on the British experience in The American Prospect, www.prospect.org, by Norma Cohen, a senior corporate reporter at The Financial Times who covers pension issues.

Her verdict is summed up in her title: "A Bloody Mess." Strong words, but her conclusions match those expressed more discreetly in a recent report by Britain's Pensions Commission, which warns that at least 75 percent of those with private investment accounts will not have enough savings to provide "adequate pensions."

The details of British privatization differ from the likely Bush administration plan because the starting point was different. But there are basic similarities. Guaranteed benefits were cut; workers were expected to make up for these benefit cuts by earning high returns on their private accounts.

The selling of privatization also bore a striking resemblance to President Bush's crisis-mongering. Britain had a retirement system that was working quite well, but conservative politicians issued grim warnings about the distant future, insisting that privatization was the only answer.

The main difference from the current U.S. situation was that Britain was better prepared for the transition. Britain's system was backed by extensive assets, so the government didn't have to engage in a four-decade borrowing spree to finance the creation of private accounts. And the Thatcher government hadn't already driven the budget deep into deficit before privatization even began.

Even so, it all went wrong. "Britain's experiment with substituting private savings accounts for a portion of state benefits has been a failure," Ms. Cohen writes. "A shorthand explanation for what has gone wrong is that the costs and risks of running private investment accounts outweigh the value of the returns they are likely to earn."

Many Britons were sold badly designed retirement plans on false pretenses. Companies guilty of "mis-selling" were eventually forced to pay about $20 billion in compensation. Fraud aside, the fees paid to financial managers have been a major problem: "Reductions in yield resulting from providers' charges," the Pensions Commission says, "can absorb 20-30 percent of an individual's pension savings."

American privatizers extol the virtues of personal choice, and often accuse skeptics of being elitists who believe that the government makes better choices than individuals. Yet when one brings up Britain's experience, their story suddenly changes: they promise to hold costs down by tightly restricting the investments individuals can make, and by carefully regulating the money managers. So much for trusting the people.

Never mind; their promises aren't credible. Even if the initial legislation tightly regulated investments by private accounts, it would immediately be followed by intense lobbying to loosen the rules. This lobbying would come both from the usual ideologues and from financial companies eager for fees. In fact, the lobbying has already started: the financial services industry has contributed lavishly to next week's inaugural celebrations.

Meanwhile, there is a growing consensus in Britain that privatization must be partly reversed. The Confederation of British Industry - the equivalent of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce - has called for an increase in guaranteed benefits to retirees, even if taxes have to be raised to pay for that increase. And the chief executive of Britain's National Association of Pension Funds speaks with admiration about a foreign system that "delivers efficiencies of scale that most companies would die for."

The foreign country that, in the view of well-informed Britons, does it right is the United States. The system that delivers efficiencies to die for is Social Security.


Originally published in The New York Times, 1.14.05

[BAI HE]

The Free Lunch Bunch
Comments (9)

SYNOPSIS:

Did they believe they would be welcomed as liberators? Administration plans to privatize Social Security have clearly run into unexpected opposition. Even Republicans are balking; Representative Bill Thomas says that the initial Bush plan will soon be a "dead horse."

That may be overstating it, but for privatizers the worst is yet to come. If people are rightly skeptical about claims that Social Security faces an imminent crisis, just wait until they start looking closely at the supposed solution.

President Bush is like a financial adviser who tells you that at the rate you're going, you won't be able to afford retirement - but that you shouldn't do anything mundane like trying to save more. Instead, you should take out a huge loan, put the money in a mutual fund run by his friends (with management fees to be determined later) and place your faith in capital gains.

That, once you cut through all the fine phrases about an "ownership society," is how the Bush privatization plan works. Payroll taxes would be diverted into private accounts, forcing the government to borrow to replace the lost revenue. The government would make up for this borrowing by reducing future benefits; yet workers would supposedly end up better off, in spite of reduced benefits, through the returns on their accounts.

The whole scheme ignores the most basic principle of economics: there is no free lunch.

There are several ways to explain why this particular lunch isn't free, but the clearest comes from Michael Kinsley, editorial and opinion editor of The Los Angeles Times. He points out that the math of Bush-style privatization works only if you assume both that stocks are a much better investment than government bonds and that somebody out there in the private sector will nonetheless sell those private accounts lots of stocks while buying lots of government bonds.

So privatizers are in effect asserting that politicians are smart - they know that stocks are a much better investment than bonds - while private investors are stupid, and will swap their valuable stocks for much less valuable government bonds. Isn't such an assertion very peculiar coming from people who claim to trust markets?

When I ask privatizers that question, I get two responses.

One is that the diversion of revenue into private accounts doesn't have to lead to government borrowing, that the money can come from, um, someplace else. Of course, many schemes look good if you assume that they will be subsidized with large sums shipped in from an undisclosed location.

Alternatively, they point out that stocks on average were a very good investment over the last several decades. But remember the disclaimer that mutual funds are obliged to include in their ads: "past performance is no guarantee of future results."

Fifty years ago most people, remembering 1929, were afraid of the stock market. As a result, those who did buy stocks got to buy them cheap: on average, the value of a company's stock was only about 13 times that company's profits. Because stocks were cheap, they yielded high returns in dividends and capital gains.

But high returns always get competed away, once people know about them: stocks are no longer cheap. Today, the value of a typical company's stock is more than 20 times its profits. The more you pay for an asset, the lower the rate of return you can expect to earn. That's why even Jeremy Siegel, whose "Stocks for the Long Run" is often cited by those who favor stocks over bonds, has conceded that "returns on stocks over bonds won't be as large as in the past."

But a very high return on stocks over bonds is essential in privatization schemes; otherwise private accounts created with borrowed money won't earn enough to compensate for their risks. And if we take into account realistic estimates of the fees that mutual funds will charge - remember, in Britain those fees reduce workers' nest eggs by 20 to 30 percent - privatization turns into a lose-lose proposition.

Sometimes I do find myself puzzled: why don't privatizers understand that their schemes rest on the peculiar belief that there is a giant free lunch there for the taking? But then I remember what Upton Sinclair wrote: "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it."


Originally published in The New York Times, 1.21.05

[count]

Thanks Pete, good ****! Fire up another one. :D

[BAI HE]

Many Unhappy Returns
Comments (14)

SYNOPSIS:

The fight over Social Security is, above all, about what kind of society we want to have. But it's also about numbers. And the numbers the privatizers use just don't add up.

Let me inflict some of those numbers on you. Sorry, but this is important.

Schemes for Social Security privatization, like the one described in the 2004 Economic Report of the President, invariably assume that investing in stocks will yield a high annual rate of return, 6.5 or 7 percent after inflation, for at least the next 75 years. Without that assumption, these schemes can't deliver on their promises. Yet a rate of return that high is mathematically impossible unless the economy grows much faster than anyone is now expecting.

To explain why, I need to talk about stock returns. The yield on a stock comes from two components: cash that the company pays out in the form of dividends and stock buybacks, and capital gains. Right now, if dividends and buybacks were the whole story, the rate of return on stocks would be only 3 percent.

To get a 6.5 percent rate of return, you need capital gains: if dividends yield 3 percent, stock prices have to rise 3.5 percent per year after inflation. That doesn't sound too unreasonable if you're thinking only a few years ahead.

But privatizers need that high rate of return for 75 years or more. And the economic assumptions underlying most projections for Social Security make that impossible.

The Social Security projections that say the trust fund will be exhausted by 2042 assume that economic growth will slow as baby boomers leave the work force. The actuaries predict that economic growth, which averaged 3.4 percent per year over the last 75 years, will average only 1.9 percent over the next 75 years.

In the long run, profits grow at the same rate as the economy. So to get that 6.5 percent rate of return, stock prices would have to keep rising faster than profits, decade after decade.

The price-earnings ratio - the value of a company's stock, divided by its profits - is widely used to assess whether a stock is overvalued or undervalued. Historically, that ratio averaged about 14. Today it's about 20. Where would it have to go to yield a 6.5 percent rate of return?

I asked Dean Baker, of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, to help me out with that calculation (there are some technical details I won't get into). Here's what we found: by 2050, the price-earnings ratio would have to rise to about 70. By 2060, it would have to be more than 100.

In other words, to believe in a privatization-friendly rate of return, you have to believe that half a century from now, the average stock will be priced like technology stocks at the height of the Internet bubble - and that stock prices will nonetheless keep on rising.

Social Security privatizers usually defend their bullishness by saying that stock investors earned high returns in the past. But stocks are much more expensive than they used to be, relative to corporate profits; that means lower dividends per dollar of share value. And economic growth is expected to be slower.

Which brings us to the privatizers' Catch-22.

They can rescue their happy vision for stock returns by claiming that the Social Security actuaries are vastly underestimating future economic growth. But in that case, we don't need to worry about Social Security's future: if the economy grows fast enough to generate a rate of return that makes privatization work, it will also yield a bonanza of payroll tax revenue that will keep the current system sound for generations to come.

Alternatively, privatizers can unhappily admit that future stock returns will be much lower than they have been claiming. But without those high returns, the arithmetic of their schemes collapses.

It really is that stark: any growth projection that would permit the stock returns the privatizers need to make their schemes work would put Social Security solidly in the black.

And I suspect that at least some privatizers know that. Mr. Baker has devised a test he calls "no economist left behind": he challenges economists to make a projection of economic growth, dividends and capital gains that will yield a 6.5 percent rate of return over 75 years. Not one economist who supports privatization has been willing to take the test.

But the offer still stands. Ladies and gentlemen, would you care to explain your position?


Originally published in The New York Times, 2.1.05

[Ming Yue]

Originally posted by MasterKiller
Guess which oil giant had to shell out recently for the largest asbestos claim in history...Go on....guess. You know you want to.


hmmm... could it be.... maybe.... oh, say....
















HALIBURTON?
:rolleyes:

[Radhnoti]

Bush said SS would go bankrupt. When you're bankrupt, you say "I can't pay it all, I'll pay you what I can and you'll have to give me a pass on the remainder."

If you're getting 73 cents instead of the dollar you're "owed" by someone, that fits the definition of bankrupt.

SS, barring a tax hike or pushing the retirement age being pushed back, is set to go bankrupt as was stated.

It's ridiculous that the democrats claim it mattered 5 to 6 years ago and NOW everything is all better.

I want things privatized, I'm relatively young and I'd prefer not to count on the good will of the voters in the future. I think it's nothing but good to take influence/power away from the government, that's why I support this idea.

[Shaolinlueb]

so if the young people pay our ss? why dont we jsut pop out more kids? i know the baby boomers are a lot more then my current generation.

[MasterKiller]

Originally posted by Ming Yue
hmmm... could it be.... maybe.... oh, say....


HALIBURTON?
:rolleyes: Good. Now, I'll give you two chances to guess which current VP of the United States brokered the deal for Halliburton to buy the company that was responsible for the asbestos suit, KNOWING that the suit was pending, because his good buddy ran the other company and needed someone to bail him out.

[Ming Yue]

see attachment...

[GLW]

Seems that many who support this administration are capable of seeing only black and white.

For them, it boils down to : "If you support the president, Social Security is broken. ANYONE that doesn't support privatization is wrong. Social Security CAN'T be fixed at all."

This is NOT at all what the opposing viewpoint is saying.

What HAS been said is that back in the 80's, Greenspan said it needed a fix. His recommendation was for a hike in the SS tax so it would take care of things. What happened is that the hike was insufficient and it needs a fix now.

I have NOT heard ANYONE in the opposition say that NOTHING needs to be done. What they ARE saying is that privatization is NOT the answer and will end up costing us much more than the 2 trillion dollars estimated as seed money.

They are also saying that fixing the system is a better deal.

A couple of weeks ago, a columnist/economist did the numbers. He went back and did a what if on what he would have ended up with had he invested his money in Wall Street. He used something like the SP 500 or the earnings on things that definitely would be in many people's portfolio.

He was surprised to find that SS actually returned better on the investment and had a 2% overhead instead of the much higher one that privatization came with.

The other thing is that getting a better return requires you to invest in something that WILL do better. Hmmm...let's think about that for a second. After the melt down in 2001...I watched as my SAFE investments lost around 1/3 of their value. I was VERY happy that I was nowhere near retirement age.

Now, what happens when that happens to a significant part of the US population? Who supports those old folks then...THEIR FAMILY if they are lucky. If not, are they on the streets?

The numbers on the number of people who have had to declare bankruptcy due to medical bills are equally staggering.

It is a pay me now-pay me later thing.

However, GW can get the brownie points for it now and be long gone when it is discovered that he sold the cow for magic beans.

[wdl]

Originally posted by Shaolinlueb
so if the young people pay our ss? why dont we jsut pop out more kids? i know the baby boomers are a lot more then my current generation.


Yeah, that's part of the problem. All of the baby boomers kids used birth control and didn't have 6 kids.

-Will