Campos: Bribe for greedy geezers

An acquaintance of mine - a man in his mid-50s who makes a good salary, but who lives on the edge of his means - has just refinanced his house. With interest rates so low, "Homer" decided to take a good chunk of cash out of the value of his house to buy a sports car he's been coveting. "I'm investing in the future," he tells me.

For the past couple of years I've heard Homer talk about how badly his pension plan has been hammered by the bear market. Although he hates his job, he now figures he will have to push retirement several years further off into that future in which he tells me he's investing.

I thought of Homer when I saw the details of the Medicare prescription drug benefit bill that's working its way toward President Bush's signature. This bill is essentially a $400 billion bribe, designed to buy votes in next year's election. At a time when it has become more obvious than ever that the Medicare program is destined to bankrupt the federal treasury, this bill features no structural reforms, no real means testing, and no economic logic.

It is, in fact, the purest sort of political thievery, taking the wages of the working poor (Medicare is the most regressive tax program in the federal budget) and giving them to a politically powerful bloc of voters, without regard to who among those voters needs or deserves a piece of this spectacularly unjust giveaway.

Homer is part of the first wave of baby boomers who are just starting to retire, and who seem certain to make the elderly an even more unstoppable political force. He's part of the postwar generation that grew up in an increasingly affluent America, and that has blown incalculable sums on ever-bigger houses, rich Corinthian leather, bass boats, ski vacations, plasma TV screens, environmentally insane automobiles, and 10,000 other symbols of our consumer-driven culture.

Something tells me the Me generation isn't going to volunteer to bite the Medicare and Social Security bullet. Indeed, there's every reason to believe that they'll extract even more extravagant benefits for America's increasingly greedy geezers, thereby both putting off the day of reckoning, and guaranteeing it will be that much worse when it finally does come.

Every time I write a column on this topic, I get outraged e-mails from Sun City, Ariz., Las Vegas, and wherever else America's elderly are spending the wages of the working poor. "Don't you know we were the greatest generation?" they remind this young whippersnapper. "We defeated Nazism! We survived the Depression!" And so on.

OK, great - you defeated Nazism (a cynic would be tempted to ask exactly what someone who was 12 years old when Berlin fell did to defeat Nazism, but let that pass). Why does this mean you deserve yet more free insurance coverage, paid for by people who have no medical insurance of any kind?

I can hardly wait to hear the baby boomer rationalizations for the next installment of the Great American Entitlement Giveaway. "We were at Woodstock! We invented sex, and drugs, and rock 'n' roll!" Groovy, man.

Which brings me back to Homer and his far-out sports car. Why doesn't Homer stop lighting money on fire and instead save it for his retirement? I'll tell you why: Because he isn't a sucker. After all, he can be sure somebody else is going to pay for a solid chunk of his golden years, whether he needs help or not. It's the American way.

Paul Campos is a professor of law at the University of Colorado. He can be reached at paul.campos@colorado.edu.

One of the untold stories about the collapse of the Iron Curtain is that it was largely the last battle in an inter-generational war in the communist nations of Eastern Europe. The younger people finally just looked around them during the 1980s (thanks to their growing exposure to Western television, radio, etc.) and decided that there was no way in hell they were going to live a second-rate lifestyle just to allow the previous generation to get their guaranteed government pensions, housing subsidies, health care, etc.

The problem here in the U.S. is that we have no philosophical basis on which to wage such a mild inter-generational war. As a result, the utter irony is that this "Me" generation described in this article has raised a generation of children who will have no moral qualms about euthanizing their parents when the going gets rough.

I was literally one second away from posting this myself. Glad I opened up a second browser just to doublecheck before hitting the post button

The impending retirement of baby boomers is going to have a profound effect on American socioeconomic life.

When the first Social Security recipients started receiving payments in the 1950s, there were 16 workers for every one recipient. Now there are three workers. Soon it will be only two.

"When the first Social Security recipients started receiving payments in the 1950s, there were 16 workers for every one recipient. Now there are three workers. Soon it will be only two."

That's how I plan to convert all my nieces and nephews and grandson into conservatives.....by telling them the facts about SS, etc..oh, and the drug benefit, too....how nice it will be that they are paying for OUR drugs (when they know we can well pay for our own!!!)

I've heard that Cally may just have a tax revolt.

So goes Cally - eh?

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