The coming generational frictions do not have to happen

Like many marriages in trouble it comes down to money. Who is going to pay the baby boomers’ Social Security and Medicare promised payments? After all, the collected monies are already spent, and there is no money in the treasury to pay these unfunded deficiencies. The number crunchers for both demographics and the budget agree that the system will soon be busted as soon as the baby boomers “come online”. It will take either a major reduction in benefits, or a major increase in taxes for the workers. Both options will bring generational political warfare if present things do not change.

With something this obvious and this serious to our American socialist ideals, one would think this would be a repeated debate point in the long extended 2008 Presidential campaign. Yet it even appears this question is off the table, or screened out by the likes of CNN before a YouTube debate. Perhaps all this is doing the candidates a favor, but it is not doing our Country a favor. Nor do our present political leaders seeking election or reelection do our Country a favor by avoiding discussion and hard talk about this third rail of American politics. Is the election about them (and their egos), and their and their staff’s perks, or is it about our Country? They should keep in mind their perks may also disappear.

To avoid this most difficult subject invites future civil war or revolution, or at least some new kind of Nation-first political party. Perhaps some of the hired staffs might survive, but certainly today’s politicians who avoid this subject will not. Just take the retirement benefits (pay and medical) and go away. And again, hope the benefits do not disappear.

There are things that can be done today. Mostly it surrounds the 2008 local, congressional, and presidential elections. If we citizens are to avoid a future train wreck over Social Security and Medicare’s promised benefits compared to the future’s ability to fund it, now is the time to vote. All this after asking the questions that are presently being avoided as a political favor to our politicians. How about us?

A realist might express frustration at politicians like FDR (1930's) who set up this whole process and even at our earlier congress’s and ancestors that voted for it. Now the bills are coming due. There was much debate at the time about the institutional and national costs of making citizens dependent on government financial income, as well as funding reconstruction from private vice government sources after the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927. Hurricane Katrina is a more modern example.

In either way, we citizens are left holding the bag in 2007. Voting should sort things out, one hopes. The alternatives are much worse.