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.
My kids don't have that excuse. If they turn out to be idiots, it is their fault!
And don't forget all the drugs we did, causing a generation of idiots to be born.
Wouldn't that be the 80's Generation?
no, your generation, which is just turning 50 are die hard union members who have screwed every company in american and has furthered the spreed of socialism in america.
this in not a flame at you but it is the truth about your generation.
Beg your pardon, but I'd say that you're wrong there. Most Gen X'ers are not nihilistic at all, we've been portrayed that way (and also as slackers). Most X'ers I know work long hard hours, and scrape through life with a realistic outlook on life. Your black and white broad brush strokes are really showing your youthful bias.
Cheers,
CSG
Those who fought it sure. The majority who lost it are the problem.
Um, you just said, "I was never a feminist. Oh, I was into man-hating, sexual libertinism and avoiding marriage, but I didn't call myself a feminist. I hate labels."
That depends. My children are much younger. (Besides, it was wtc911 who did the drugs, not I.)
I knew a helluva lot of WWII vets that once would take great exception at that statement. In fact, a statement like that to them would be very hazardous to your health. I know a few now in their 80's that can still jeopardize your health. I know a lot of Boomers that would take the same actions. Keep it to yourself.
Yikes, I was in 8th grade in 81.
So lemme get this straight. You have no moral scruples against using the government to confiscate my money and hand it over to you. But if I call that "socialist", you'll beat the crap out of me? Um, I rest my case, comrade.
Some of us can decide to become Socialists at 62. :)
No Thanks, I'll take the Greatest Generation, Gen X and Gen Y. They live in the real world. (It really isn't all about you).
Cheers,
CSG
(The son of some very late Greatest Generation'ers)
Never said at all what you just wrote, never hated men either, just did not want to marry every one I was with...
I did not avoid marraige, but I married when I felt it was right or wrong my choice...
I also had a child out of wedlock when the person I was with demanded I have an abortion, but I didn't and supported my child without welfare or child support.
This is a feminist?
If not "socialist" what would you call someone who expects the government (and other taxpayers)to pay for them in their old age?
Pleese..Gen xer and Gen Y is about what??????? spoiled, coddled, whiney,computer generation.
Per capita, the hardest working generation in America's history, based on average hours worked.
Surprised?
bla bla bla..............
I guess I should let my dad know this who walked in the snow and worked hard manual labor for 12 hours a day.
As he loves to tell me..LOL
It's easy to work 15 hrs a day sitting on a chair in front of a computer screen while typing away..
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