Generational war is brewing

Tracey Press ^ | 11/10/05 | Froma Harrop

[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.

[Marie]

Where were the Gen Xrs when the POTUS tried to FIX SS earlier this year? I saw NO marches supporting his plan to allow them to KEEP their owh money. I guess they were too busy doing whatever Gen Xers do.

Sorry. We were a little busy working our 13-15 hour days to take time off to protest and march. Thank God all you conservative Boomers were there to pick up the slack for us! You guys have always been great at marching and protesting. I'm sure that you were out there defending the future of you progeny.

[Marie]

You know, those of us who struggled to give our children two-parent homes, supported and stayed with them, went to track meets, band concerts, soccer games, and hundreds of parent teacher conferences, sort of resent being lumped in with the boomers who were selfish.

Thank God for you, Miss Marple. I honestly regret that my generation didn't have more moms like you. I had Daddy, Step Dad #1 and Guy-My-mom's-Married to #2. I had 42 moves. I had homelessness. I didn't have siblings or morality training or access to an education. Sadly, I'm not the only one. Many, *many* of my generation suffered the same, third-world childhood that I did right here in the good ol' US of A.

We're not asking for pity, understanding, or sympathy. We just want to keep our damn money so we can raise our own families and put aside for our own retirement. We don't want Grandma to rot in the street. But it sure seems crappy when the grandparents are expecting us to pay for their RV and their green fees. Sadly, because so many Boomers with the entitlement attitude really do exist, the rest of you get painted with a rather broad brush.

If you don't want to get splashed with that paint, don't bristle and tell us to stop fighting. Say, "I am a Boomer and I refuse to screw my kids!" Be a mama bear and defend your cubs, darn it! Why do so many Boomers who actually agree with us simply tell us to be polite and more specific instead of bashing down those who threaten their children's future?? As one mother to another... I just don't understand it!

[Shalom Israel]

Huh? Where did I ever talk about private property? You are clueless arn't you.

You can't possibly be that dense. You claim to pay more in taxes than I earn in a year, but you don't comprehend that your earnings belong to you? And that taking them away from you is theft? And that taking them away from other people is also theft? And that your complicity in theft makes you a thief?

Where did you get the idea that laundering your stolen money through the IRS absolves you of guilt? I say again, if you fought socialism, you lost: you came home a socialist.

[Marie]

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...

Simply amazing... I've heard of this "Dad" thing before, but I thought it was a myth. Now are you talking about your biological or your first or second step? Or is it the guy down the street that had a soft spot for you while you lived in that apartment with your mom and stayed home by yourself evenings while she was waitressing that one year? Or the guy who felt sorry for you when you were 7 and fed you Pringles and hotdogs in the hallway of your apartment because your mom was in the ER and couldn't take care of you? Or was it one of the "Uncles"? I'm really confused by that "dad" thing. Sounds wonderful.

Thanks to Boomer divorce rates, most of us Gen Xers didn't have a "dad". We had "That guy who sees us on the weekends and gives us things" or "the guy who's got the same last name as mom" or "the neighbor guy who felt sorry for us and taught us to ride our bike that one Saturday".

I would've liked to have had a dad to tell me to stop whining and to lead by example. As it is, we got our lessons on how to be a mate and a parent and a decent human being from books and TV. The vast majority of us have no friggin clue how to conduct this "life" thing and we're *still* doing better in adulthood than our parents who came from 2 parent, stable homes. (And you all wonder why we're a bit miffed when you, as a generation, tell us that we, as a generation, *owe* you?)

[Marie]

I also paid for your education as well.

And a world-class education it was. Thank you for contributing to the highest illiteracy rates in the history of our nation. Appreciate that. Yup. Your generation really helped us out there.

[Shalom Israel]

Proably because *MOM* fianlly got sick of taking a beating from *Dad* and kids were tired of being called derogatory names by a drunk parent so divorces started happening..

Right--before 1950, women everywhere were getting beaten and just taking it. Uh huh. Laney, I'm afraid that your comments don't reflect reality in general very well. But they do tell us quite a bit about your own family background. You have my sympathies.

[Shalom Israel]

I paid into SS, my parents paid into SS, my grandparents paid into SS. So now it's your turn, bud. That's the way it works.

In short, you're a socialist. No surprise there; lots of people are. What's surprising is that you probably consider yourself a "conservative".

[Marie]

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...

Funny. When my children screw up, I blame my parenting and work harder to teach them and reach them. I don't just throw them into the forest and blame them when they get lost.

And you're right about the not being able to do anything without an assist. Thanks to the great education that *our parents* provided for us.

[Marie]

I hate to break it to fans of the greatest generation but much what we blame the boomers for is their fault.

The persons who lead and won WWII was the older generals and NCO's who was members of the Silent Generation that fought in World War I and survived the Depression. That generation gave us such things as Art Deco and Jazz. FDR, Truman and Ike was of that generation. The young privates and junior officers of World War II did not start to take over the country until 1960.

Baby Boomers did not start taking over the leadership positions until the 1990's.

While much of what the radical hippies did is not defend-able they wouldn't of gotten away with it if the Greatest Generation in charge of the universities and government and the culture of that time had wanted to stop it.

The greatest Generation was strong when they fought the war but by the 1960's they went weak and permissive.

Earl Warren was not a baby boomer.

This needed repeating. Now, if the conservative Boomers on this thread would just stop whining that we owe them, things would settle down.

[Marie]

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.

Oh please. Through Clinton we outsourced many of our military out to civilian contractors. Most of them are ex-military. It's a different military than it was in 1970 when my biological served.

[Marie]

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...

You are a good mom. You may not realize it, but the most important thing you ever did for them you did before they were even born. You very carefully choose their father.

When I was young (18, 19) I knew exactly crap. The best part was that I *knew* that I knew exactly crap. (That's the hard part.) I hunted women like you. Good mothers. Women who had happy, well-adjusted marriages. I'd pin them down over coffee and make them tell me everything that they knew about marriage and parenting. I was quite obnoxious about it. I wouldn't leave until they'd given me everything they could think of and I'd take notes.

And every one of the, God Bless 'em, every one of them lovingly and freely told me every bit of advice that they could dredge up. Never did a woman deny my request for information.

Now I spend about 40% of my waking hours teaching women of my generation the lessons that these lovely ladies taught me. I save marriages. I prevent abortions. I teach women how to mother their own children.

You would've been one of my mentors. I'm not angry at you. I'm angry at the mothers of the dozens of women I've counseled over the years. I'm angry at the fathers who abandoned their daughters and didn't teach them a damn thing and who never gave them a sense of security or taught them how to handle a marriage. And I'm angry at a generation (and it really is the bulk of the generation) that refuses to see the impossible burden they are placing on the shoulders of their children via social security. They refuse to even look at the math. They can't accept that they will be breaking their families for two generations if they maintain the status quo.

[R. Scott]

But not Uncle Sam!

[Marie]

v

My husband's a soldier. Thank you for picking up the slack that the Clintoon draw-down left us. I'll never forget that it was contractors that were hung from that bridge in Fallujah. You guys are soldiers in my book.

[meadsjn]

You've made some good points. I'm in the younger half of the boomer generation, and I've seen and said the same stuff.

The older boomers are just now reaching retirement age. In a sane world, the next few years would feature the younger boomers and Gen-X workers moving into the positions from which the retiring boomers experienced the prime earning years of their career.

Rather than allow such handovers, and thereby ensure the continuance of a self-sustaining economy, our policies have shifted to maximize golden parachutes for the soon-to-be retired, while diminishing the job prospects for younger citizens through outsourcing, work visas, and unfettered illegal immigration.

The next few years are going to be economically difficult for those citizens with a mortgage and children.

The only solution is for younger voters to get informed, show up and vote -- vote to cut government back to its Constitutional minimums, to cut taxes accordingly, to re-establish the US as a sovereign nation free of the WTO and UN, to shift some of the tax burden away from the producers (via the income tax), to the importers (via tariffs) and to consumers (via consumption taxes).

Things will have to get much worse in the next few years to make that happen, but the Democrats and RINOs in Congress and the state legislatures have ensured that things will get much worse.

The good news is that the total retired boomers and silents combined will be outnumbered by eligible voters in the work force as soon as 2008. Younger voters are trending more conservative than older voters, but they are less likely to vote or be politically active.

The chances of convincing the most selfish voting bloc in our history to vote against their best interests in their retirement years are slim to none.

The odds are much better to convince younger eligible voters to show up and vote to save their nation, especially as conditions for them worsen over the next few years.

[Miss Marple]

Well, Marie, I guess it's because I don't have much contact with anyone who DOES want to demand such stuff of their children. I supported the effort to privatize Social Security.

Are there lots of selfish Boomers? You bet. There are also lots of selfish "Greatest Generation" people; go down to Miami and interview the retirees if you don't think that's true. And there are probably lots of selfish people in your generation as well.

The whole problem is selfishness, regardless of age. The "cultural revolution" which swept through the country when I was young was fueled by an abandonment of the church by OUR parents and a materialism fueled by Madison Avenue and Hollywood, aided and abetted by our good friends in the press. The people like me were never on the front cover of Time Magazine; it was the group who went to Woodstock, rioted at Kent State, fled to Canada....they were the ones the media chose to be the emblems of my generation.

I am so sorry you had such a chaotic growing up. My first marriage ended in divorce when my husband abandoned me, and when I remarried I was determined that my son would NOT grow up with such a set of problems. My husband adopted my son, we had a daughter together, and we have been married for 30 years. We did our best to give our children the sense that family is always there and not something ephemeral.

Your family didn't turn out the way you would have liked, but I will bet it isn't the way your mother would have liked it to have been, either. We can't go back in time, so the only answer I have is to make YOUR family the example.

There is so much sadness and anger about this, and understandably so. I wish I could wave a magic wand and fix things, but I can't. I do think, however, that the media and the left are fanning the flames of resentment.

[Marie]

I do think, however, that the media and the left are fanning the flames of resentment.

You are correct in so many things, but can you see my point about the entitlement generation that's even prevalent here? Young moms and dads feel threatened by the Boomers. Actually threatened as if our children's lives and futures were at stake. (Which, in large part, they are.) If this truly *is* another leftist media plot to divide the masses along entitlement lines, please show me. Because all I can see right now are the numbers.

You had 40 workers:1 retiree, We'll have 3 workers:1 retiree.

That's a big, scary drop to a woman who's trying like hell to maintain a traditional home on a soldier's salary. And when I try to express my concerns to people of that generation... and I don't mean just people, I mean FReepers who who should know better... I'm hearing how they're going to go play with their social security money and not give a damn about anyone but themselves for the last 20 (that's 20 friggin' years!) of their lives even if it means their own children and grandchildren suffer for it. This is horrifying to me! As far as I'm concerned, it's the Boomers who've declared war on *us*.

You are one of the few FReepers of that generation who seem to "get it". The rest don't even seem the slightest bothered by the plight they're leaving us. Are we worried about *our* retirement? God no. We're so far beyond that it isn't even funny. We're worried about our kids right now. I do believe that the vast majority of us Gen Xers have accepted that we're well and truly screwed in this situation and right now we're just trying to salvage our families.

And we can't understand or accept that our parents aren't just as worried about our kids as we are. Isn't that supposed to be natural? Aren't parents supposed to want to protect their kids and grandkids? How can they even think this way? Why aren't Boomers (with kids) standing up and saying, "We've got to find a better way. I'm not going to screw my kids and grand kids like this."

Once again, why aren't our parents protecting us? (And then I start to think about how our parents didn't protect us against abortions, violent television, a crappy education, a crappy home, etc... don't get me started!) As a group, they never have. Why should we expect anyone of that generation to step up and do the right thing now?

And it's FReepers - FReepers!, for the love of God! - who are expressing this socialist selfishness and expecting "society" to take care of them.

It may have not been the Boomers who started this snowball in motion, but they're certainly not fighting the situation with serious vigor.

[Miss Marple]

Well, of course you are worried about your children. I worry about my children and grandchildren. I also think that you have a point about attitudes.

I remain convinced a solution will be found. All is not lost, you know. And thank your husband (and you) for your service to our country.

[MNJohnnie]

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.

Well Economic Illiteracy strikes again. I know this comes as a big surprise to the brain dead Left, but Economics is NOT a Zero sum game. If we charge less taxes, we do NOT take in less income. The cost of the tax cuts was MORE then offset by the increase in revenues. For the 1st time since the 1980s, we have had 10 consecutive quarters of more then 3% GDP growth. The Govt is collecting PLEANY of revenue. The problem is NOT we tax too much, it is that we SPEND too much. There is NO reason why domestic spending in a period of almost nonexistent inflation should increase in double digits EVERY year. We simply MUST go back to the 1994 Pay-As-You-Go budget rules. Both sides in Congress have demonstrated clearly a complete gutlessness when it comes to imposing fiscal accountability on the Federal Bureaucracy.

I wish just ONE time one of this self important morons who write this crap would bother to take a couple of Econ classes before they go out spewing their hyper stupid nonsense.

[MNJohnnie]

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.
Well Economic Illiteracy strikes again. I know this comes as a big surprise to the brain dead Left, but Economics is NOT a Zero sum game. If we charge less taxes, we do NOT take in less income. The cost of the tax cuts was MORE then offset by the increase in revenues. For the 1st time since the 1980s, we have had 10 consecutive quarters of more then 3% GDP growth. The Govt is collecting PLEANY of revenue. The problem is NOT we tax too much, it is that we SPEND too much. There is NO reason why domestic spending in a period of almost nonexistent inflation should increase in double digits EVERY year. We simply MUST go back to the 1994 Pay-As-You-Go budget rules. Both sides in Congress have demonstrated clearly a complete gutlessness when it comes to imposing fiscal accountability on the Federal Bureaucracy.

I wish just ONE time one of this self important morons who write this crap would bother to take a couple of Econ classes before they go out spewing their hyper stupid nonsense.

[MNJohnnie]

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.
Well Economic Illiteracy strikes again. I know this comes as a big surprise to the brain dead Left, but Economics is NOT a Zero sum game. If we charge less taxes, we do NOT take in less income. The cost of the tax cuts was MORE then offset by the increase in revenues. For the 1st time since the 1980s, we have had 10 consecutive quarters of more then 3% GDP growth. The Govt is collecting PLEANY of revenue. The problem is NOT we tax too much, it is that we SPEND too much. There is NO reason why domestic spending in a period of almost nonexistent inflation should increase in double digits EVERY year. We simply MUST go back to the 1994 Pay-As-You-Go budget rules. Both sides in Congress have demonstrated clearly a complete gutlessness when it comes to imposing fiscal accountability on the Federal Bureaucracy.

I wish just ONE time one of this self important morons who write this crap would bother to take a couple of Econ classes before they go out spewing their hyper stupid nonsense.