Screwing America's Youth

Why aren’t the young people demonstrating in the streets? Their futures are being mortgaged away right before their eyes and they don’t seem to care. Maybe the reason the politicians keep harping on the horrors of global warming is to keep the kids from focusing on the real threat to their futures, out-of-control government spending which is going to erode living standards going forward.

Even before the current recession we were headed toward financial calamity with the concurrence of Medicare and Social Security with the aging of the baby boom generation. Even the stupidest politicians know that this is a slow motion train wreck, but none of them have the guts to blow the whistle.

Bush tried to tackle SS a few years ago but the Dems and AARP launched a misinformation campaign which caused a panic amongst seniors who in turn flooded their Representatives with protests, thereby dooming any chance of reform.

Next we had the financial bailout, which was probably necessary to avoid the risk of a full scale collapse, which would have caused widespread suffering. Now the line is forming: auto companies, insurers, states and cities.

Now Franklin D. Obama is promising a new New Deal with a “stimulus” plan that rivals the National Recovery Administration of the old New Deal. If you want to find out how that worked, read “The Forgotten Man” by Amity Shlaes. But you don’t have to go back that far. Look at the Bush stimulus last year. It hardly increased consumer spending at all.

Stimulus plans are popular with politicians because they show that the pols are caring and are “doing something.” The only problem is they don’t work. (See my Nov. 27 blog, “Bailouts, stimulus & Inflation.”) They do very little to boost the economy, but they increase our National Debt and annual interest burden.

All this money has to be paid back at some point or we keep paying interest on it forever. But, you say, the government can just print more money. Yes, it can and is. But every new dollar created (today they don’t actually print them, they just press a few computer keys) just decreases the value of each and every dollar. That’s inflation.

Investors, mostly foreigners, who we depend on to buy our debt realize that they are going to get repaid in cheaper dollars, i.e., dollars with less purchasing power. Therefore, they demand higher interest rates to compensate for that risk. This increases our interest costs, which increases our taxes and leaves us with less to spend on other things like food, housing, education.

Youth of America, grab some pots and pans and head to the streets!