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.
Oh and your social programs, let's see My grandmother lost her husband from Lung cancer as he worked in the coal mines and she was left with 4 children ages 18 months to 4 years old, there was no Social Security no money and what did she have to do to make ends meet? stand in Bread Lines
sold Boot leg Booze and met a man fianlly to help her out financially she did not LOVe but she needed money bottom line so she and her children could survive.
Go get educated on what a socialist is before you throw the term around so loosely. Guess since you think you heard that term its something you're supposed to say. Guess your generation is the first one that's dumber than the one before you.
Detroit, which used to be America, was run into the ground and surrendered to the Japanese by 'greatest generation' corporate and union leaders.
Roe v. Wade was both argued and decided by 'greatest generation' lawyers and jurists...before the large majority of boomers could even vote.
The Great Society of welfare give aways and handouts was ushered in by the 'greatest generation' led by a potus for whom absolutely zero boomers were old enough to vote for or against.
Affirmative Action...'greatest generation'.
Immigration reform that opened the flood gates from the south and Asia while shutting the door from Europe...100% 'greatest generation'
Your view of the sixties and early seventies seems to have been informed by afternoon specials.
Frankly,I would not want you backing me up on a one day Walmart sale. Funny,
You jump to conclusions like you actually know me, and know what I do... FYI I'm not draft able (congenital issues) even though I'd wear the uniform in a heartbeat. And by the way, I'm out here, right now looking out for your butt, but I didn't have to, after all I am a slacker Gen X'er who has everything thanks to you. I could have made better money working for RSA. Some FReepers serve this country in silence, not needing to wear a uniform, or salute an officer. They bleed and they die just like any serviceman or woman. If you think the Military are the only ones taking fire in Iraq, or Afghanistan you are mistaken. And if you think that safe and sound means not being over there your sadly mistaken as well. Enjoy your Veteran's Day, some of us will be working, keeping the barbarians at the gates for one more day.
Cheers,
CSG
Wrong again my friend..For the most part MEN of World War1 and World War11 were the providers for the family there was a wife to support and more than likely 4 or more children to support. They were EXPECTED to do this as women were EXPECTED to wait on there husbands and children it was a DUTY wether you liked it or not. Many married because the woman were pregnant, MEN did none of the child rearing it was ALL left up to the woman these were not great families they needed help and that is why you started to finally see a breakdown when the 60's rolled around.
Do you live in a fantasy bubble? Churches did not have money to support all these women??? Women were busy in those days taking care of kids NO Microwaves, No Automatic washing machines they needed money SUPPORT not LOVE for heaven sake, Yeah it was tough!
Two of the most despicable politicos in American History.
Pretty amusing thread, I'm feeling all of my 54 years tonight. :-}
Oh, my ribs! I remember that episode :)
Churches supported them with food and connections to people who needed their services.
If they had homeless people in the community, people were of much greater character and would stay with friends or move in with other family.
Home ownership and living with only one family under a roof is a recent deal and more people were not professionals and were renting with several people in the past.
No one even back then had to starve or go without a roof over their head.
There were some shelters as well.
The mothers, and grandmothers like today that were alive helped out as well.
People IMO had closer family ties back them with less TV and computers.
believe = belief...
Well I wish parents that bore babies who eventually became people like Adolf Hitler, Jeffery Dahmer, Ted Bundy Charlie Manson would of TERMINATED PREGNANCY.
If we could see the future....
That's the price you pay for not doing well in school and having the ability to pursue and obtain good paying employment.
It's easy to work 15 hrs a day sitting on a chair in front of a computer screen while typing away..
Really? It depends on what you are doing in front of that computer. Are you good are writing UNIX kernel device driver code? How about doing vibration signature analysis in real time? Are you ready to design the hardware from scratch, code the firmware and deploy an embedded system? It still takes a top flight education to garner the skills that command a good salary. A computer is just a tool to accomplish sophisticated tasks.
I've pulled some 42 hour non-stop shifts sitting in front of a computer. It was necessary to recover a computer system key the operation of PacBell.
But, but I can wipe a hard drive clean with software and reinstall everything just like it was before.
What I meant by that comment was MEN of the World WAR 11 era had much more stress put on them because the work was harder manually more stressful because it was not high paying and that money had to be stretched to support a wife that did not work and feed a family.
Men have educated jobs now and usually a wife that works so the responsibility is less...
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