In my continuing quest to ‘fight for truth, justice, and the American Way,’ just like Superman did on television in the 50s, I have finally figured out who is responsible for all the fiscal problems of our Federal Government!
Without a doubt, this group of individuals, subversive as they were, have created and willingly partaken in the fiscal cliff, the government debt, sequestration, and every other event that is causing the fiscal demise of our great nation.
I will take credit for being the first to publically identify this group. No other news or media source has done so. I, with my limited resources and abundance of common sense, have outdone them all!
Who is this group that should be brought to justice?
Any guesses? Republicans? The Tea Party? (The media would like you to think that!) Democrats? Supreme Court? Congress? Jane Fonda? (I know she is not a group, but I wanted to see if you were really paying attention.)
The real group that has caused our fiscal demise is———-drumroll please, the BABY BOOMERS!
Yup. I am convinced that generation, my generation, is responsible for all the financial woes of our great country!
I know you want me to explain.
The baby boomers were the direct result of World War II. Like a cocktail, you mix about 6 million horny servicemen that have been away from home for one to five years with roughly 6 million waiting women and you had a population explosion not seen since then. That was the baby boomer generation!
Life was good being a baby boomer. Our parents were strict, but fair. These parents had expectations and aspirations for their ‘baby boomer’ progeny. Our parents had survived the Great Depression and fought in World War II. That made the ‘Greatest Generation’ a rather tough bunch. None of these parents wanted their children to face the same hardships that they had experienced during their lifetime. I heard my own parents say that on numerous occasions.
So now, that glut of humanity known as the ‘boomer’ begins growing up.
We go to school. Some of us go to college. We get jobs. Then, just as we are entering our late teens and early 20s, this bump in the road called the Viet Nam War came along. Many served and fought. Too many died.
It was a ‘blurry war,’ fought in a changing America.
We were in the midst of, and grew up in, the Cold War. A war with billions of dollars spent to deter the perceived military threat and expansionistic designs of Communism. Viet Nam was the offshoot of what was termed the ‘domino theory.’
In 1960, the Federal debt stood at $286.3 billion. There was no concern about our economy or debt- even during the height of the Viet Nam war or the Cold War, because America was on a roll! People were working, corporations were thriving, and taxes were being paid. Woohoo for Washington!
America survived and thrived. Our economy was chugging along nicely. Unemployment was low.
The 60s were also a decade of turbulence. We had the Viet Nam war. The Cold War continued. We saw racial demonstrations and anti-war rallies. We endured the assassinations of two Kennedy brothers and Martin Luther King.
But through all of this, our country enjoyed prosperity- so much prosperity that during his term in office, Lyndon Johnson originated his ‘Great Society’ program.
The program specifics are not important. What is important is that it allowed a large part of our population to become dependent upon the government for financial support and assistance.
How many people in their 20s are concerned about retirement? The Boomers were no different.
Even though the working ‘boomers’ were not concerned about Social Security, we all knew we had it coming. Why would we ever believe we would not receive it? We were paying for it in every paycheck.
We did not realize that we were the base of a Social Security pyramid. A pyramid that would come back to haunt us later.
From the government’s standpoint, it was a great and solvent program because there were many paying contributors with very few recipients.
The 60s were the Baby Boomers’ rebellious years. We became both independent and a little self-centered. The 70s, 80s and 90s were our productive years.
During those productive years, we bought houses, cars and appliances. We took vacations. We paid our taxes. We also got Medicare and Medicaid. Woohoo for Washington!
But the one thing we did not do enough of, as a generation, during our productive years, was save. We did not save enough for our retirement future. Why should we? Spending was patriotic! The Big G in Washington was going to take care of us. We knew how to spend. For many of us, saving was not a priority.
Our economy became the largest in the world by being a ‘consumer- driven’ economy.
Our Baby Boomer relationship with the government had developed into a macabre symbiotic relationship over our lifetime.
The Boomers’ role in this relationship was to earn money, pay taxes, and spend money to drive the economy. The government’s role was to ‘take care of us’.
The Boomer generation enjoyed and drank the government Kool-aid. Our problem, and now the government’s problem, is that we got older. We retired. The pyramid turned upside down. Now that it has, the government cannot afford to continue in its role in that symbiotic relationship.
When Social Security began, there were 17 workers for every recipient. That number is now three workers for every recipient, and by 2030, it will be 2 workers for every recipient.
The same is true with many of our socialized programs. When we were working and contributing – no problem. Now that we are retiring – big problem!
I certainly remember that during the 90s, there were some wise people in Congress that foresaw the future problems with many of these socialized government programs. The solution? There were some short term solutions, but it appeared that the prevalent solution of choice was to ‘kick the can down the road.’
That brings us to today. Our government now has a federal debt of $16.7 trillion, and they want to raise the debt ceiling! This debt is approximately 60 times what it was in 1960. (I find this ironic, as I am almost 60 years older than I was in 1960.) But here is a real clincher that most people are not aware of: there is another $6 trillion in debt that has not been addressed because of the financial failures of Fanny Mae and Freddie Mac! Our federal debt, as I am writing this, is realistically $23 trillion!
Should there have been a government shutdown? Absolutely not! But that would have to occur in a perfect, non-existent, non-political world. There are some very astute individuals in Congress that foresee the problem of ‘kicking the can’ down the road without some semblance of fiscal sanity and spending cuts. The ultimate political solution is apparently to leave the problem for the next Congress.
How are these astute individuals being treated? You see it every minute of every day. They are being hammered by the media and in the media by their political counterparts, who try to crucify those ‘mean, unpatriotic Conservatives.’ The biggest argument is that we, the United States of America, cannot possibly default on the debt. I have some startling news for you— WE ARE BROKE ALREADY!
Both the Liberals and the media are extolling the virtues of a ‘clean bill.’ A clean bill is another way of saying ‘unrestricted spending without limitations!’ Aren’t these policies the policies that got us into this quagmire in the first place? It appears that last night, Congress did pass a funding bill that does not contain any restrictions on spending.
So, to all my fellow Baby Boomers, I lay the blame at our feet. As a generation, we caused and allowed most of the problems in our government today. We were naïve. We believed the government could always afford the socialized programs they passed, without negative effects. We were wrong and we continued to elect representatives that pandered these programs. Today, we have elected representatives that continue ‘buying votes’ to get reelected by using public funds. As a result, we are now passing down a federal debt that our children and our grandchildren will never be able to repay. At the expense of our hedonistic, self-centered lifestyle, we have mortgaged the future of our grandchildren!
We demonstrated against the Viet Nam War and lived through the Cold War, but we did nothing about 20 million illegal aliens that invaded our country and depleted our government of resources for which we funded.
We fought in Viet Nam and fought against Communism. Communist – a word that we were brought up to despise and dread, yet now we’ve allowed our bloated government to enable us to become just that—Communists. What do you think of that, Comrade?
