The War against the Young – Victor Davis Hanson – National Review Online.
Read the whole thing. Better yet, don’t. No reason for the younger generation to realize the screw job their getting. No need to wake up until I’ve received the benefits of the 3:1 age banding of the “Affordable” Care Act and all your tax money to prop up Social Security and Medicare.
To a generation saddled with college debt and facing bleak job prospects, the current Democratic hysteria over any sensible reform of Social Security and Medicare increasingly sounds just as surreal. In fact, the only question left about reforming entitlements is not if, but when: whether those in their forties and fifties will share the pain of cutting back, or whether the escalating burdens of keeping the system solvent will fall entirely on a younger generation that will have bigger debts and smaller incomes.
Votes matter.
I was reading about this idea a year or two ago, probably at New Geography. They were calling young adults “Generation Screwed.”
I wish votes did matter on this issue, but I’m not sure. W. Bush proposed privatizing Soc. Sec. in 2005, while he still had a majority in Congress, and he couldn’t get it done. The Democrats said his plan would’ve increased the rate at which the fed. gov. was adding to the debt (look how much they care about that now), due to the fact that it didn’t cut back on benefits to existing beneficiaries, but at least it was a long-term proposition, forever changing the program towards something that had a greater likelihood of becoming solvent someday. If only Bush had fought as hard for that idea as Obama did for ObamaCare. But he had a war to fight against Islamists.
The idea was with greater returns people would gradually choose the private plan over the public one, and so the gov’t would be on the hook for less over time. We didn’t take it when we had the chance. Now I don’t think that plan would be financially possible, even if there was the political will.