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.
Those little red messages telling me that someone has honored or trashed me for something I said always bring me back. This time I'm glad. Thanks for seeing the intended humor. A lot ot times my attemps fail, or even backlash.
Mam’n
I don’t know if you have gone off your meds while posting to me on this thread, but you really are acting a bit whacko, obviously you are obsessed with some past freeper name *missy* she must have had some impact on you.
You look at my profile page, and make many assumptions about the pictures I posted, you have made assumptions about me, my family and attacked me like some predator after its prey? You have some serious issues that need to be addressed.
What you think of me is none of my business; you can think I am a liar, a fake, the spawn of Satan and in the famous words of Rhett Butler:
Frankly (nopardons) I don’t give a damn….
My apologies. This is a frustrating thread and a frustrating day. BTW not once at work (yes, even though I work with the government, I was at work yesterday) or here was I told "happy veterans day". Not even a call from a relative. Such is life.
Tell your hubby TO BE SAFE. Sigh. :-(
I am frustrated because so many of you just don't see the big picture. If you guys don't seriously help us find a compromise on this SS issue, this country will be well and truly screwed for the next two generations.
I truly believe there really is no solution. Guess what it isn't our fault. We were not the generation that basically put this nation on the road to bankruptcy. It was already flying down that path before we turned 18.
I know it's not what you were promised. I know that it's not fair.
"Life is not fair so get over it". That is what my adopted father taught me.
I know that you all were looking forward to retirement and actually hoping you'd be fit enough to really enjoy it.
Actually that is not true. I dread retirement. At that moment I will no longer feel useful to this nation or society. Nobody gives a damn what I did during the cold war even now. At least presently I still help defend this nation.
Ever wonder why suicides are up among seniors? You don't think I haven't considered that as an option when the time comes?
It's not right for someone to see the numbers, see that this will bankrupt their children and their grandchildren and still insist that they deserve to play for 20 years, consequences be damned.
You think that is what I have been saying? Personally I say scrap the SS NOW for anyone under 57 (that would include me) and hope we as a nation would survive.
Just my two cents.
In order to be a good liar, you have to 1) keep up the new persona, which you YOU CAN'T and 2) keep your stories straight, which YOU CAN'T.
You are repeating just about every single thing that missyme has ever posted. You claimed that you "use (SIC) to be in HUMAN RESOURCES...". So was missyme; or so she claimed.
You were banned. You're back with a new nic and posting your life history, word for word; bad grammar and horrible misspellings intact.
Soon, everyone here will have your number. :-)
COULD IT BE BECAUSE YOU WERE CAUGHT POSTING THAT AD, WITH THE HOPE THAT OTHERS WOULD ASSUME THAT IT WAS A PICTURE OF YOU ? LOL
Your a fool woman!, I took those pic's down so I could write info on my page I KNEW YOU WOULD READ! and hey Ms. Know it all since I posted a picture of a woman with long dark hair, are you assuming that is what I look like? do you know what laney looks like? or this Missy?
DO you think everyone here on FR that has sent me Freepmail is in support of your idiotic posts to me???
NEWSFLASH-They are not..
Everyone thinks you are making a total idiot of yourself?
I posted truths about me bad and good, I am not here trying to act like I am some Royal Princess, which obviously you think you are....
You have a great sense of false power for a small minded woman who has learned to muster a computer and the Internet...
You want to know what I look like? send me your email I have no problem sending you my picture, maybe then you can see who Laney is*
I never posted to you NEVER! yet you come invade MY SPACE to prove what? your a woman with the worst case of Menopause, PMS or Mental problems.
I have an idea though- How bout leaving me the hell alone! and I will do the same with you!
Laney!
BTW: Did this Missy have lots of enemies here? or just you?
I'd like to meet her, if you hated her it was because she was proably very nice, something you are not and believe you me I am NOT THE ONLY ONE WHO THINKS THAT ABOUT YOU!
This post is a mess! Instead of wasting your time on line, I suggest that you go take some courses in remedial English. I really am sorry that the school system you attended failed you so, but you can and should correct the problem. With just a little help and work, I know that you can improve yourself.
Yes, I know what missyme claimed she looked like. And I know, FOR A FACT, that the picture of the back of the head of a woman, which you posted to your personal page, came from an ad for hair weaving. WOULD YOU LIKE THE LINK TO THE AD, WHICH HAS THE EXACT PICTURE YOU POSTED ?
Would you like to know how many people already know that you are a fraud and are sending me FREEPmails, pet? :-)
Since WHEN, exactly do YOU own FR? I came "into YOUR space" ? As you know, FR is a place where anyone and everyone picks a thread to read and then posts to that thread. You don't have a "space", you don't make the rules, and you can't tell anyone whom they may or may not reply to. That's the way FR works.
Why don't you tell me what you feel about Donald Rumsfeld? :-)
I have no idea what your problem is, but you definetly have one! that being said, let me state for the record! YOU do not know me! as far as anyone's identity, you know no ones! I take it you have a real name other than NOPARDONS??
I will tell you this, I know some people on Freerepublic who know me personally and DO know my actual name age and place of residence.
For all I know you could be a Baby Raping illegal alien, as long as you don't insult my space I could care less who you are.
And as far as you know you could be posting to a figment of your imagination.
All I am to you Nopardons is a person that is typing to you...no more no less..
Well it's Saturday, I have some people to entertain, so I am no longer able to entertain you!
Enjoy your day Miss Nopardons.
You've been here, supposedly, for less than 2 months, yet you claim to know so many people and know them in real life too? That's quite amazing; however, one doesn't really have to know someone in real life, to know a poster's real name, where they live, or many other things.
Hmmmmmmmmm...backhanded insults now? Calling me a "baby raping illegal alien" is quite sinister sounding and beyond the pale. Nevertheless, it is also exceedingly funny. LOL
No, unlike you, I know what is real and what isn't real. You can't be a "figment of my imagination", since everyone can, quite clearly, see your posts. Have many flashbacks, do you?
You didn't answer my question, so I shall ask it of you again.........TELL ME, WHAT'S YOUR OPINION OF DONALD RUMSFELD?
Do you tell that to the other Viking Kitties and the rest of the RKBA crew too?
FYI...the Viking Kitties go after and ZOT trolls. RBKA then comes in and paves said troll remains over.
Since you claim to know almost nothing at all about FR and how it works, it would behoove you to not pass judgment on things you neither know nor understand.
Feeling better now, are you?
You seem to be lonely and are looking for someone to chat with. Stop high-jacking this thread and go look for someone else to talk to.
Just one more thing: *I* care what you did during the cold war. As a young teen, I was deeply impressed with our Cold Warriors. For three of my four years of highschool, I was blindly lead along the socialist path by my teachers. My senior year we were reading Brave New World, but the teacher put a positive twist on it. "Wouldn't this be a wonderful place to live in?"
I remember the light flicking on. Flashes of every cold war movie I'd ever seen, of the stories I'd read about the people attempting to flee Russia, of the stories told by my uncles who served in the military in the 50's and early 60's sped through my head. I actually stood up and said, "Hey! This is Communism!" She tried to sooth me and tell me how a "little" communism was actually a good thing. I was so upset that I asked to go home. (My mother was just liberal enough to allow it.)
If I hadn't had the stories I would never have made the connection and had my epiphany. I'd still be happily marching down the Socialist path. As it turned out, I spent five years reading and researching and going over old ideas from my new perspective.
So I say now, with sincerity: Thank you so much for your service! :-)
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