The now generation couldn’t wait. They had to have everything now. It was all pretty easy. Lot’s of jobs to pick from, easy money to borrow, stock markets going up and up, home prices skyrocketing, home equity loans easy to get.
We watched as they bought everything they could buy. America with 4% of the population consumed 20% of the world’s GDP. We were the world’s market.
The party’s over, turn out the lights. We have hard choices to make. We can let all the excesses of the past 15 years shake out, and absorb the consequences of our spending binge, or we can postpone reality and delay the pain for the next generation to deal with.
The die is cast. Trillions of dollars of deficits as far as the eye can see. No one can say it better. Print it, or borrow it, or tax it, but don’t face the music. Put it off for someone else, that someone being my grand kids, to face..
Never, never deal with the hard choices when we can delay the pain. Create an energy plan that makes sense. Why? Let’s get on with global warming. It doesn’t make sense, but we feel good doing it. Until we run out of energy. Don’t worry, my grand kids will deal with that. Fix social security or medicare or Medicaid. Why? Let my grand kids worry about that. Fix our broken manufacturing economy. Why? It’s impossible to make things and still take care of the environment. We’ll just buy them from some other country that trashes their environment. What, no jobs here in America? Let our grand kids worry about that. Labor unions out of control. No problem. They gave us $400 million for the last electtion. Let’s give them an easier way to penetrate more businesses. We’ll call it card check. It will wreak havoc on the economy. No problem. Our grand kids will clean it up.
Pension plans underfunded. No problem. They won’t run dry until our grand kids go to draw on them.
Everyone looking to government to fix things. It will make government more powerful and the public less powerful. When government can’t fix it, no problem. The grand kids will.
Someone needs to stop postponing the pain. I guess my kids need to do that. I will help, but until they see the light and realize they are destroying any chance my grand kids, their kids, have for a decent standard of living, I can’t help.
Until anger replaces apathy, it will be business as usual. Do not, under any circumstances, take the hard road to problem solving. Always, always find the easy road and postpone the pain. It’s going to get really ugly and there will be lots of anger. Some may be directed at the parents of the grandchildren for being the “now” generation and using up the American Dream, not preserving it for their kids.
This might result in the grand kids being the “tough” generation. The one that takes accountability for fixing problems, not shoving them aside. That’s the only positive I have been able to find in this discouraging trend.
