May 24, 2011
by iluvoldppl
Letters
Two Generations: An American Story
Published: May 14, 2010
Re “Root Canal Politics” (column, May 9):
Thomas L. Friedman is right. The Greatest Generation built the most prosperous society in history with its blood, sweat and tears, giving its children a tremendous head start. How have we responded? By consuming our way to insolvency. And now we’re robbing future taxpayers of wealth that has yet to be produced.
The Grasshopper Generation may be too kind a term for us boomers. Even grasshoppers don’t eat their young.
Michael Smith
Cynthiana, Ky., May 10, 2010
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To the Editor:
Thomas L. Friedman equates boomers with “hungry locusts” who have eaten through the abundance their parents created for them, sinking our country into crippling debt. If anything, it was boomers who rescued our economy in the 1980s and 1990s through the high-tech entrepreneurial economy they created. And the one president who embraced boomers, Bill Clinton, ended his presidency with a budget surplus that could have lasted for years to come.
Perhaps Mr. Friedman should aim his fire elsewhere. Dial back to the 1960s, when the venerated World War II generation claimed that we could have both guns and butter, and in the process sank our nation into debt while shipping off baby boomers to their death in Vietnam. Move ahead to the 1970s, when that same generation ran our industrial base into the ground, leaving us with double-digit inflation and interest rates and steering our automobile industry into near collapse.
Ronald Reagan ran against the boomer culture and the national debt soared. George W. Bush, demographically a boomer, prided himself on being the anti-boomer and presided over the near collapse of our economy.
Mr. Friedman is right that we need a national reckoning to deal with our economic woes. But criticism of baby boomers will only delay the real conversation we need to have.
Leonard Steinhorn
Washington, May 9, 2010
The writer, a professor at the School of Communication of American University, is the author of “The Greater Generation: In Defense of the Baby Boom Legacy.”
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To the Editor:
Far from being a resource-consuming bunch of slackers, members of the baby boom generation have worked hard and steadily for 40 years to pay the bills for themselves, their children and, yes, their parents in the Greatest Generation, an admirable group that nevertheless has taken much more money out of our social safety net than it ever put in.
And the boomers have done all this in a decades-long era of flat wages and rising prices. While many Greatest Generation families could make it on one income, it now takes two incomes. And what is our thanks for all this steady, tortoise-like effort? To be told we are the problem.
This is not a generational quarrel; it’s a political one. Approximately two-thirds of our current national debt was accumulated under the last three Republican presidents: Ronald Reagan and the two George Bushes.
Who began the movement to prevent the kind of sensible tax increases we need to pay for the government services we want? Conservative Republicans. Who turns out to oppose tax increases, often school bond efforts? Older voters of the Greatest Generation.
We don’t disagree with Mr. Friedman’s assertion that our social programs may face hard times and cuts. But we disagree that the baby boom generation is to blame. We have had our nose to the grindstone for decades, trying to support not one but three generations.
Jan Farrington
Brian Farrington
Fort Worth, May 10, 2010
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To the Editor:
“Root Canal Politics” aptly describes our addiction to free lunch politics. As a local government official who has to balance a budget every year, I see one answer — a balanced budget amendment. Avoiding budget reality has eliminated honesty from our politics and creates disincentives to find efficiencies, to compromise or to prioritize.
A balanced budget amendment — with reasonable provisions for recessions, times of war and debt financing for sound investments — would not change parties’ priorities, but it would force an honest discussion of the trade-offs. We need new rules if we are to bring honesty back to our politics.
Rob Krupicka
Alexandria, Va., May 9, 2010
The writer is a city councilman.
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To the Editor:
Thomas L. Friedman states, “My takeaway is that U.S. and European politicians — please don’t laugh — are going to have to get a lot smarter and more honest.”
It is the voters who are going to have to get a lot smarter and more honest with one another first, and then demand that their politicians get smarter and more honest. Given our political system, it’s unlikely to happen the other way around.
Joe McDevitt
London, May 9, 2010
Dec. 3, 2010 – Most of the initial reactions to the proposal on December 1 by President Obama’s special committee seeking ways to reduce the U.S. deficit focused on changes to Medicare as being the most dramatic of the adjustments recommended. Medicare, no doubt, is critical to senior citizens but the program closer to the hearts of millions of seniors is Social Security – the security blanket. The committee’s report does urge drastic changes in this program to and says unless the nation acts the booming number elderly will “bring the Social Security program to its knees.”
