Robert Samuelson has a must read piece from yesterday's Washington Post. Read the whole thing, but here is the gist:
The big lie of campaign 2008 -- so far -- is that the presidential candidates, Democratic and Republican, will take care of our children. Listening to these politicians, you might think they will. Doing well by children has now passed motherhood and apple pie as an idol that all candidates must worship. (snip)
Our children face a future of rising taxes, squeezed -- and perhaps falling -- public services and aging -- perhaps deteriorating -- public infrastructure (roads, sewers, transit systems). Today's young workers and children are about to be engulfed by a massive income transfer from young to old that will perversely make it harder for them to afford their own children.
No major candidate of either party proposes to do much about this, even though the facts are well known.
Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid -- three programs that go overwhelmingly to older Americans -- already represent more than 40 percent of federal spending. A new report from the Congressional Budget Office projects that these programs could easily grow to about 70 percent of the budget by 2030. Without implausibly large deficits, the only way to preserve most other government programs would be huge tax increases (about 40 percent from today's levels). Avoiding the tax increases would require draconian cuts in other programs (about 60 percent). Workers and young families, not retirees, would bear the brunt of either higher taxes or degraded public services.
I'd like to point out that Fred Thompson is talking about these issues, but he is not suave enough to garner votes. He also hasn't cried in public lately.
In Democracy in America, Alexis de Tocqueville writes of the sort of despotism democracies ought to fear:
Above this race of men stands an immense and tutelary power, which takes upon itself alone to secure their gratifications and to watch over their fate. That power is absolute, minute, regular, provident, and mild. It would be like the authority of a parent if, like that authority, its object was to prepare men for manhood...
I wrote yesterday in a post on the film Juno that one of the hallmarks of maturity is the willingness to accept responsibilities and to fulfill them. If we are a nation of adults we will address our responsibility to coming generations. If we are a nation of children, more interested in our immediate gratification rather than our posterity, then we will continue to ignore this problem.
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