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.
"(Stop childhood obesity! Give em' Marlboros, not milkshakes!)"
I can see how, in certain circles, your husband may have a point. Personally I agree with the cable guy, "Thats funny, I don't care who you are."
Lord, how I love Larry! (whistful sigh!)
(Snip) And yet healthy, able-bodied Boomers are planning on flipping us the bird as they drive by in their RV and yelling, "Stop whining and buy me some gas!"
The biggest problem by far is the creation of a "Me Generation", that encompasses both Boomers and Xers...which, btw is one reason why Americans are hated so much abroad. Other cultures find great value in the elderly, and care for them in their own homes. Our culture does not value it's senior citizens, and would rather shove mom and dad into nursing homes once they become "inconvenient".
I'm sure there are a significant number of seniors who feel entitlement, but there are also many others who want to work and continue to be productive and needed until they die. But jobs are few and far between for these folks, as corporate America ignores the countless contributions that older, experienced workers could be making.
In essence, if you are old in America and want to work, you're screwed unless you can dream up your own business, or be fortunate enough to get that highly-coveted "Greeter" position at Wal-Mart.
But this is all merely symptomatic of the problem I mentioned earlier - the "Me Generation". Until we change our attitudes, the problem will remain...and yes, the Xers will bear the burden regardless of policy constructed in Washington. The REAL answer lies within our own families, neighborhoods, communities, and within corporations.
Let's take care of our own, reach out to elderly neighbors, and quit outsourcing jobs that could be filled by seniors that can work.
India Soon To Be A Major Venue For Pharmacuetical Outsourcing.
The worst of all scenarios: brain drain, loss of corporate tax revenue, loss of jobs for American workers.
The Replacements: TIM
Bastards of the Young
God, what a mess, on the ladder of success
Where you take one step and miss the whole first rung
Dreams unfulfilled, graduate unskilled
It beats pickin’ cotton and waitin’ to be forgotten
We are the sons of no one, bastards of young
We are the sons of no one, bastards of young
The daughters and the sons
Clean your baby womb, trash that baby boom
Elvis in the ground, there’ll ain’t no beer tonight
Income tax deduction, what a hell of a function
It beats pickin’ cotton and waitin’ to be forgotten
We are the sons of no one, bastards of young
We are the sons of no one, bastards of young
The daughters and the sons
Unwillingness to claim us, ya got no word (war? ) to name us
The ones who love us best are the ones we’ll lay to rest
And visit their graves on holidays at best
The ones who love us least are the ones we’ll die to please
If it’s any consolation, I don’t begin to understand them
We are the sons of no one, bastards of young
We are the sons of no one, bastards of young
The daughters and the sons
Young...take it, it’s yours...
^
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