Greg Mankiw links to a WSJ piece about our negative bequest to our children. It’s a point I’ve made many times myself (and am sometimes accused of bashing the elderly because of this). A good quote from the WSJ piece:
[R]egardless of how much they have contributed, the hard reality is that the federal government has already spent it. No matter how deserving they are, it is younger generations of workers who have to come up with the money.
It is morally wrong to force young people to make good on false promises made before they were even born. It is an outrage, a scandal, a shame on our society. A society that invests in the old at the expense of (actually, to the large detriment of) the young cannot survive. A caring and kind society cares for the weak and elderly and helpless; a dynamic and just society allows the young to grow and prosper on their own merits. If America is to prosper as a nation, the young must be given room to build families and careers. To build lives, without the onerous, crushing burden of debt run up by their forebears.
Never mind questions of ethics or “fairness”: it’s just math. The numbers do not, cannot, and will not ever even up, no matter what accounting tricks the government uses. Until we fundamentally change how the Big Three entitlement programs (SS, Medicare, Medicaid) work, we will continue to load up our young people with a crippling load of debt they had no hand in accruing.
“Monty”, “A hot cup of DOOM!, no cream, no sugar”, Ace of Spades H.Q., 2011-05-12
May 13, 2011
QotD: The financial legacy of the Baby Boomers
Filed under: Economics, Quotations — Tags: Aging, BabyBoomers, Debt, Pensions, SocializedMedicine, SocialSecurity — Nicholas @ 00:05
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