Posted on 09/02/2011 10:32:22 AM PDT by Kaslin
Older people almost always seem to think they had it tougher than “kids today” do. So some older folks are striking back against the privileges enjoyed by today’s young people. And this doesn’t bode well for the future of society.
Consider a recent story out of Pennsylvania. “The owner of a small restaurant outside Pittsburgh is banning children under the age of six, saying they regularly disrupted other customers’ meals,” the Wall Street Journal reported recently. “I’ve decided someone in our society had to dig their heels in on this issue,” the owner (a former teacher, luckily not of grammar) told reporters.
Well, it’s his restaurant, and if he wants to turn families away, that’s his choice. And he doesn’t seem to be facing a lot of pushback. The Journal reports that receipts at the restaurant are up, and notes: “A poll on the website of a Pittsburgh TV news channel found 64 percent supported the under-six ban, compared with 26 percent who said it was a bad idea. About 10 percent said they didn’t care. More than 10,000 people voted.”
Meanwhile, CNN columnist LZ Granderson opines that this restaurant is on the right track. “I don't know about you but I would gladly support an airline or restaurant that didn't make someone else's yelling, screaming, kicking offspring my problem,” he writes. “If you're the kind of parent who allows your 5-year-old to run rampant in public places like restaurants, I have what could be some rather disturbing news for you. I do not love your child. The rest of the country does not love your child either.”
Maybe I’m eating at the wrong restaurants. I’ve had more flights and meals disrupted by unruly (drunk) adults than by uncontrolled children. Still, it seems obvious that many Americans have no patience for the idea that “children will be children” and are instead embracing the wisdom of the Middle Ages: “children should be seen and not heard.”
Ah, but they will be heard from eventually, and we may not enjoy hearing what they’ll have to say. As journalist Michael Barone noted recently, Americans will soon depend on today’s youngsters to pay for the country’s lavish retirement promises.
“[U]nder Social Security, as with most public pension systems, current pensions are paid for by current workers. As lifespans increase and birth rates fall, the ratio of pensioners to active workers falls toward one-to-one,” Barone warns.
“That’s not enough to support the elderly in anything like the style to which they have been accustomed, unless tax rates are sharply increased. And sharply higher tax rates, as Western Europe has shown over the last three decades, reduce long-term economic growth. That’s the problem, often abbreviated as ‘entitlements,’ facing our political system.”
Still, many of today’s political leaders oppose slowing the size and scope of federal entitlement spending. In May, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi told the Washington Post she would fight to ensure “no benefits cuts” in Medicare. “It is a flag we’ve planted that we will protect and defend. We have a plan. It’s called Medicare.”
As for Social Security, “Two decades from now, I’m willing to take a look at it,” Sen. Majority Leader Harry Reid told MSNBC in March. “But I’m not willing to take a look at it right now.” Earlier in the year he declared that changes to the program were “off the table.”
Keep in mind that, because parents are having fewer children, each of those youngsters is on the hook for a steadily-growing share of the federal budget deficit. “Our social insurance programs have slowly created a massive and immoral shift of wealth and obligation from today's middle class to future generations,” Stuart Butler of The Heritage Foundation warned in 2007. “Medicare alone now has a $32 trillion unfunded obligation -- a tab that is being passed to our children and grandchildren. Medicare and Social Security together now constitute an unsecured ‘mortgage’ of $170,000 placed in the crib of every newborn American.” The tab Butler cites has only increased in the last four years.
When the time comes to pay that “mortgage” off, however, some of today’s youngsters might decide to change the laws instead. “If, for instance, Congress were to adjust the formula by which Social Security cost-of-living increases were calculated or change the age of eligibility, future federal liabilities would shrink by trillions of dollars instantly,” John Steele Gordon noted recently in the Wall Street Journal.
The lesson? We can either put our own fiscal house in order by reducing the amount we’re promising in entitlement benefits to future retirees. Or we’d better be nice to today’s children, since we’re counting on them to be nice to us when they’re running the country in the decades ahead.
Who can afford to go out to eat anymore anyway?
So we can’t say anything about out of control children in a restaurant, because these kids will be paying into Social Security in the future?
So these out of control kids are going to hold a grudge against all of society when they become adults, if we don’t let them run wild today??????
is this fool trying to say that if we don’t let children inside restaurants then when they grow up they won’t pay our SS benefits?
Well I guess because it has not happened to you in the $150 a meal restaurants the writer eats in it is not a problem.The only time I have ever had food interrupted by a drunk was having nachos in a bar where that is kind of expected.I can’t count how many times I’ve ate and either dealth with someone’s child screaming,running, or even standing at my table trying to eat from my food.I do not go out that often so having this happen is really infuriating....I’d rather do dishes at home and not spend the money!
People do need to control their children better in restaurants. My brother and I operate a few franchised locations, and many complaints forwarded up to our offices by the managers are from disgruntled diners. The diners are angry that they had their dining experiences ruined because of children screaming or simply being out of control. These are not infants we’re talking about. Six year old kids should be able to sit at a table and behave themselves. If I had acted like these kids do sometimes, I would have gotten a few swift spankings.
I ran into this years ago in Colorado on vacation. We wanted to eat somewhere nice, but this place owuldn’t let me in with a baby.
Then Estes Park wouldn’t let me in the craft place with a toddler. It was a weird vacation.
See #6
Kids trying to eat from your plate? I’d call the waiter over while the kid is there and tell the waiter to put little Johnny on a stick and roast him like they roasted that kid for you last week and then glare at little Johnny and say, “Bwuhaha! He was tasty, but you look plump and tender!” Maybe even pinch him and say, “Oh, yes, he’ll be tasty!”
Yeah - it's the kind of thing liberals try to push off as logic.
It's that twisted type of thinking that gave us beliefs in the dangers of Alar, nuclear winter, global warming, the population bomb, global cooling, Club of Rome, and whatever other illogical scare stories liberals pushed.
People having to put up with liberals' out of control children is not connected to Social Security in any way... There are plenty of restaurants that welcome families - enjoy children and carter to them. They don't need to be everyplace. Liberals can hire a babysitter if they want to play adult for an evening.
I appreciate your points. It seemed like bizarre thinking to me to say that, we can’t discipline kids today, because they will be offended as adults that they were disciplined as children, and because of that, they won’t want to pay into Social Security. That’s quite a stretch of logic........
The author is muddle-headed, at best, and clearly has no business writing.
My advice to today’s young is: Work hard, get a good education so you can get a high paying job because I’M going to need it!
And if you’re thinking of what you’ll do when you have control just remember an eighty year old with a walker has very little to loose any more.
So figure out something else to cut or we’ll be coming to live with you.
Thanks for aborting a quarter of my generation, btw.
Really stupid way to frame an argument
Restaurants are public accomodations and they cannot discriminate on the basis of age.
Some attorney is going to make a killing, and this restauranteur is begging for it.
And yes: if you want to cash Social Security checks on the backs of those children one day, you're going to have to treat them as if they were your fellow human beings and endure their presence.
What I find hilarious (other than the fact that many of the applauders of this child ban labor under the delusion that they are also Christians), is that many of those complaining about the presence of children are the same people who whine about not being able to blow smoke on other people while they're eating.
If a six year old does not sit still or runs around then the parents should be smacked, for not making their brats behave better
Allow me to be the first to wholeheartedly agree with Rich Tucker: You're eating at the wrong restaurants. Where are you eating, Rich, biker dives or something?
The same attitude that has created the anti-child atmosphere has also created the pro-euthanasia atmosphere.
The eighty year old with the walker will be getting a final, powerful cocktail of painkillers in a state-run hospital - not being quartered on the young.
The culture of death cuts both ways.
Talk about a losing proposition.
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