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 husband works 10-12 hours a day delivering packages. It's constant running and he might eat one meal a day, since he rarely stops for lunch. He plans on laying around when he eventually retires too. ;-)
Of course wars like Vietnam are nothing like we'll ever see, there was a large contingent of Baby Boomers actively fighting for the wrong side during the Cold War. You don't see that at all today.
I don't. I am a real scientist so I know.
However, don't paint us like we are a bunch of stealing socialists.
I always try to remain optimistic about life, and really find whiners to be quite uninteresting...my old dad had a phrase "Quit yer Whining"...and he trotted that phrase out whenever me or my brother got into our bratty modes...if we whined we got sent to our rooms, to explore what possible actions we could take, to do away with the whining...
Dad always had us come out of our rooms eventually, and explain to him, rationally, not like a whining crybaby, exactly why were we unhappy, and what we proposed as a solution...dad helped us to talk out our problems, and helped us to see our way through to a positive result for everyone...but he would not tolerate whining...that was a no-no in our house...
Truth hurts, Sorry Charlie Gen X'er's are lazy they have everything given to them, they cannot think without a Computer A cell phone or Modern Technology attached to there hip, me either, HAHA but I also know how to do well without those technology comforts...
The problem is the Republicans we vote for are all Baby Boomers. There's nothing approching a Reagan in that Generation.
We should just ship the old folks off to Florida.
Terri Schiavo
>>I see younger kids all the time who are far more conservative than their parents. What a fantastic trend.
Part of it is the fact that they aren't being completely brainwashed through a completely dominant L/MSM wherein only a Leftist line can be heard. Rush and talk radio, the Internet, and Fox News have broken that monopoly.
In your dreams only.
====================================
I'm confused, your post implies that you yourself are in service fighting the war ("in the bush with us") but your profile says you're riding a desk in a company that is profiting from the war. Which is it? Out there getting it done or just stealing the glory of the guys who are just because of your age?
You have a great plan...we had our two boys and always planned to pay for their college education...but our older boy died early, age 15 from leukemia...so we just had our younger boy to educate...still, tuitions pmts, and room and board, books, airfare, miscellaneous spending, all those were greatly expensive...but I just took on another job, and the husband took on even more overtime work, and we did it...
My son worked during the summer months, and never bothered us for any money...our deal was, he was to study in college, and we would pay for it, and so long as he grades remained excellent, we would continue paying...we just did not want him working while studying...but that was just our feelings on this matter...
Now my son earns at least 3X more than my husband and I ever earned together...and he does realize that his education that we provided him, the tools we handed over to him to deal with life, and our love for him, are all that he needed...he wants nothing from us, other than to insist we enjoy our retirement, spend our money, and visit with him, when we are around...
That argument doesn't hold water after the child is out on his own.
So will you refund the money whenever the amount you get from Social Security is greater than what you paided in taxes?
It will no longer be your money.
Once again, you still act like its is all about you. But you are right, we've had all the wonders of the Boomer generation given to us, drug using parents, broken homes, the spoiled lifestyle of being your trophy children. We're technology savvy because the computer and the TV were their to raise us, since you were too busy enjoying your hedonistic self serving lifestyle. We're so lazy we work longer hours, for Boomer bosses who go home early so they can enjoy their families. Doing the technological stuff you Boomers don't understand, and are "too important" to do. We're just so lazy, cause we had to take more credits in college. After all our Boomer professors made us take diversity classes, English literature, psychology (so we could get our feelings out), and of course these "requirements" cost us money (which we had to take out loans on because Boomer Mom & Dad were busy with divorcing spouse number sixty, and needed that money for lawyers). Don't worry, we'll put a nice marble tombstone on the boomer legacy, so that the rest of our slacker generation have at least one public toilet to use. I am sure we can Google the plans, and I just think we might have enough energy to do it too.
Cheers,
CSG
Clueless arn't you. Thank Carter for starting this mess. BTW born 1924.
I don't see too many Boomers out there in the bush with us Gen X'ers.
You are in the "bush"? Did you actually serve are you just blowing smoke? I actually served overseas in the military.
But I certainly see alot of you riding desks happy to have us do your dirty work.
I am too old to be in the "bush" now. But I was there. Where were you then?
Spare me the "We won the Cold War" attitude, most of the people that did that are worm food now.
Apparently history is not your strong suit.
Your challenge was always Islamofacism, and you settled for peace and prosperity. 1979? Osama Bin Laden? The Kobar Towers? USS Cole?
Logic is not either it seems.
Don't get on your high horse, it just hurts more when you get knocked off.
Well it certainly wont be by you, will it.
Cheers,
LOL!
You've got that right - Thanks for the laugh.
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