Posted on 11/10/2005 1:22:46 PM PST by qam1
America should prepare for a big fat war between the generations. It’s going to be ugly.
On one side is the baby boom generation, which retires and claims a ton of government benefits. On the other are younger workers, forced to fund those benefits plus pay the bills their elders left them.
When the war comes, the Federal Reserve chairman will have to be a general. That person will likely be Bush nominee Ben Bernanke. The question is, for which side will he fight?
Outgoing Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan tried to represent both sides. He supported the Bush tax cuts.
This gave comfort to today’s taxpayers, who chose not to charge themselves for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the new Medicare drug benefit and the quarter-billion-dollar bridge to nowhere.
Last spring, Greenspan did service for the other side. “I fear that we may have already committed more physical resources to the baby boom generation in its retirement years than our economy has the capacity to deliver,” he said.
One solution would be to ramp-up means-testing for Medicare, the health insurance plan for the elderly. Greenspan would reconfigure the program “to be relatively generous to the poor and stingy to the rich.”
The political reality is that the baby boom generation expects to see the nice government handouts its retired parents enjoyed, and then some. Younger workers expect to be taxed at today’s lower rates. One group will be very disappointed — or perhaps both groups — because there is no way the Candyland economics of today can go on.
The whole alarming future is nicely mapped out in a book, “The Coming Generational Storm,” by Boston University economist Laurence Kotlikoff and Scott Burns, a personal-finance columnist at The Dallas Morning News.
Kotlikoff and Burns clearly sympathize with younger Americans and Americans not yet born, who will be paying both our bills and their own. “Does it feel better,” the authors write, “if those unknown victims of our rapacity are someone else’s children and the children of those children and the children of those children of those children?”
Sounds like war to me. Kotlikoff and Burns try to be meticulously nonpartisan, but I won’t. Though the irresponsible policymaking spanned decades, today’s mad deficits rush us closer to disaster. Democrats are not shy about pushing for retiree benefits, but at least they consider raising taxes to pay for them. Not the current crowd, whose spend-and-borrow strategy is the 1919 Versailles Treaty of this-century America: an unstable setup that guarantees future conflict.
The scam is that the tax cuts are not really wiping the nation’s slate clean of tax obligations. When spending exceeds tax revenues, the difference must be borrowed. That debt does not disappear. It gets paid for, with interest, by someone’s taxes. So the Bush cuts simply move the taxes from one generation of shoulders to another.
Bernanke would certainly come to the Fed job with good credentials. Head of the president’s Council of Economic Advisers, he formerly chaired the Princeton economics department. Bernanke seems OK, but other candidates were more upfront about deficits.
One was Martin Feldstein, President Ronald Reagan’s top economic adviser. Feldstein drew flak for criticizing the Reagan deficits. The Bush White House wouldn’t want to hear that kind of thing. Anyway, there’s no need to worry about making ends meet when you can use the next generation’s credit card.
Another Republican contender for the Fed job was Larry Lindsey. He was fired as a Bush adviser in 2002, after predicting that the war in Iraq would cost up to $200 billion, a figure already passed. Lindsey did not understand: One simply does not talk price in the Bush administration.
Given the president’s tendency to give top jobs to those closest, we can give thanks that he did not nominate his banker brother. Neil Bush played a major role in the Silverado Savings & Loan fiasco of the 1980s, which cost taxpayers $1 billion.
Or perhaps the president was doing the big-brotherly thing in protecting Neil from a job sure to be filled with strife.
The person who heads the Fed in the next decade will be trying to steer the nation through the perfect economic storm. Good luck to the new chairman, and to all the generations.
Isn't is exciting to see.....sounds just like my small town.
Yes, they took chances like "what happens when we abort a full third of pregnancies" and "what happens when we steal from generations which can't yet vote to pay for our own responsibilities"?
It must have been great spending three times what you earned, in the glow of a peace achieved by the heroic sacrifices of the generation before. Congrats, I hope you enjoyed it, because when it's over, God is not likely to be amused.
Those of us who came after the boomers have no similar heroic sacrifices of the generation before to point to, because there were none, just abject cowardice and craven greed.
Roe. v Wade = 1973
I was born in 1972.
If that's not my parents' generation to blame, then there's no accounting to be had at all.
From what I know...the 60's generation thought commies were great!!!!
You are so full of it.
Three things this article misses:
1) Tax cuts generate more revenue than high taxes. Didn't we learn anything from Ronaldus Magnus?
2) Those expensive government programs should SHRINK, starting about now, b/c their client pool is shrinking; sorta like expecting the tax payers to keep on funding a shrinking school population, at the same, exoribitant levels. But this is the Dems worst nightmare.
3) Everyone needs to start building their own parts closet- for cloned parts. No problem! We Boomers can work till we're buried.
I noticed that a couple of "senior assisted living" facilities were built in my hometown over the last couple of years. I couldn't help but notice that they were built on old industrial sites that had been vacant for years due to some kind of contamination. Call it "indirect euthanasia," I guess. LOL.
I had friends DIE in the cold war bucko! Who the hell do you think were serving during that time? BTW, all voluntary.
Man, do you need to either grow up or grow a pair. I've got five kids, all of whom would find your attitude pathetic.
Yep it ain't gonna be pretty for the boomers once they are no longer able to impose their will by force. It will be poetically just if the last gasp of the culture of death championed by the boomers is to euthenize them and prevent them from further draining the resources of those who came after (this is generously assuming there's anything left for the boomers to steal by that time).
I am saying a bit more than the Funess of my post....
IMHO..People are DRY now they live in the confines of there personal areas, this is caused by many things, and feminisim has went awry that is for sure, but one thing I know many women are not going back to the Generation of World War 11 women, I can be anything I want to be and being in my late 40's I raised one son and I am a wife, daughter, mother, friend a child of GOD, I am my own person
and Thank God I am...
I want nothing from the government but to be left alone to pursue happiness as I define it. I do not believe it is my civic or moral duty to prop up the welfare state or its many clients.
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In my case a union job (CWA)for ten hours a day then night school.
Your persuasive ability is simply unparalleled. AND you're good-looking and smart too.
Yep, I happened to lose my dad in the middle of high school and was working graveyard then to to help pay the mortgage at home.
Such is life, we all get what we are dealt, but thank God I was born an American.
Why thank you. :-)
I agree with your post #99...my hubby is actually a little older than most baby boomers, being born in 1943...but I was born in late 1945, so altho we are a little older than the 'official' baby boomers, still we consider ourselves within that generation...
My hubby just retired a few months ago...I retired several years ago...we are married for 36yrs...raised two fine boys, worked hard all our lives, never expected anything from anyone, never had an abortion, paid for our current house with cash, have a nice nest egg for our retirement, just bought big RV cash, have no bills, and guess what?...most of our friends of our age, also resemble us in this way...we are self supporting, hard working, good parents, and expect nothing from anyone for free...
And yes, ,I did have an idyllic childhood, with very little TV, and lots and lots of outdoor fun and activities, never did drugs(or even knew anyone who did drugs), and grew up with great love and great discipline, which hopefully we used as a role model to raise our own children...
My husband gave 28yrs of his life to serving in the military, and loved doing so...then he spent another 12 yrs working at the post office(yeah, thats right the post office, is there a dolt who wants to make a nasty post office worker comment?)...his retirements from the army and the post office added to my retirement from the nursing home where I worked for years, added to our savings, means that we dont have to rely on any SS pmts...so, what is everyones solution?...should we return our social security pmts?...I dont think so...we put into it all of our lives, and had we not been forced to pay into social security, we would have saved and invested it...and we do hope to recover some amt of what we paid into it...
And guess what...there are millions and millions of baby boomers who are in the same 'good' situation as we are...
If one baby boomer parents did a bad job on raising them, thats not my fault...its your own parents fault, and confront them on it...stop acting like all baby boomers, are the problem, because they are not...
When my dad, a WW11 navigator, fighting in the Pacific, told me to never count on Social security, but save for myself, I took that as gospel...my dad was a wise man...dad never thought social security would last to give him anything back...well, he was wrong, he did collect...I passed onto my sons the same wisdom from my dad...provide for yourself, count on no one else, and forget social security as a possibility...I never thought social security would last to pay me, or my husband, but again I was wrong..but my son does believe I am entirely correct, social security will never last to pay him anything...and he from his earliest days of working, began saving for his retirement...
So altho many baby boomers act like morons, that can be said of every generation...every single generation has its morons, and it also has those who are responsible...Labeling one whole generation of people, as being one way or another, is just plain stupid...
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