Democrats And Social Security And Americans - Road to the Middle Class

That is appropriate, for as Carrie Lukas writes, the big government programs are a kind of compact between Americans and their grandchildren. “Policymakers should evaluate policies based on how they affect future generations.”

Yet politicians — Pelosi herself chief among them — have viewed Social Security as a convenient political weapon, not a problem to be solved. In 2005, when the president launched his effort to place Social Security on firmer financial footing, then Minority Leader Pelosi... sought to squelch debate and use the issue for political leverage... So much for thinking about the children.

Social Security is based on the same premise as the defined-benefit pensions at big corporations. These programs are based on the idea that there will always be money somewhere out there in the future to pay the pensions.

The corporate defined-benefit programs are now about defunct. Because it turned out that although General Motors looked as though it would rule the world forever back in 1950 it turned out that it didn’t.

The same thing is going to happen to Social Security. The only question is: How is it going to play out? Will the senior citizens grind their grandchildren into the dirt forcing them to pay taxes to support them? Or will the grandchildren rebel?

And of course, the Social Security problem is minor compared to the Medicare problem.

The interesting thing about this developing train-wreck is that the folks who have represented themselves to the world for over a century as the very incarnation of care and compassion are the very people who are proposing to turn the screws on the grandchildren.

It is cruel and heartless to force young couples struggling to start families to support an older, richer generation, to keep them in their empty homes, to supply them with heroic medical care, while young families go without.

As a 60-year-old, I regard this coming injustice with outrage. We baby-boomers should not be a dead weight upon the youngsters coming up. If there is help to be given it should be to the young strugglers, not to the old reprobates.

Someday soon, we conservatives will be called upon to clean up this mess. We will have to make a decent provision for the older people who listened to the Democrats and believed that they could live a bump-on-a-log life and expect the government to take care of them. Yet we must also right the injustice and render justice to the young people and their young families.

It won’t be fun.

“”

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Christopher Chantrill blogs at www.roadtothemiddleclass.com. His Road to the Middle Class is forthcoming.

Comments:

Posted by: Olivia on 03/06/07 8:45am

Mr. Chantrill, your forthrightness and willingness to take on a tough issue rather than ignore it is so refreshing! Keep on keeping on! www.forourgrandchildren.org

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Faith & Purpose

“When we began first to preach these things, the people appeared as awakened from the sleep of ages—they seemed to see for the first time that they were responsible beings...”
Finke, Stark, The Churching of America, 1776-1990

Mutual Aid

In 1911... at least nine million of the 12 million covered by national insurance were already members of voluntary sick pay schemes. A similar proportion were also eligible for medical care.
Green, Reinventing Civil Society

Education

“We have met with families in which for weeks together, not an article of sustenance but potatoes had been used; yet for every child the hard-earned sum was provided to send them to school.”
E. G. West, Education and the State

Living Under Law

Law being too tenuous to rely upon in [Ulster and the Scottish borderlands], people developed patterns of settling differences by personal fighting and family feuds.
Thomas Sowell, Conquests and Cultures

German Philosophy

The primary thing to keep in mind about German and Russian thought since 1800 is that it takes for granted that the Cartesian, Lockean or Humean scientific and philosophical conception of man and nature... has been shown by indisputable evidence to be inadequate.
F.S.C. Northrop, The Meeting of East and West

Knowledge

Inquiry does not start unless there is a problem... It is the problem and its characteristics revealed by analysis which guides one first to the relevant facts and then, once the relevant facts are known, to the relevant hypotheses.
F.S.C. Northrop, The Logic of the Sciences and the Humanities

Chappies

“But I saw a man yesterday who knows a fellow who had it from a chappie that said that Urquhart had been dipping himself a bit recklessly off the deep end.” —Freddy Arbuthnot
Dorothy L. Sayers, Strong Poison

Democratic Capitalism

I mean three systems in one: a predominantly market economy; a polity respectful of the rights of the individual to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; and a system of cultural institutions moved by ideals of liberty and justice for all. In short, three dynamic and converging systems functioning as one: a democratic polity, an economy based on markets and incentives, and a moral-cultural system which is plural and, in the largest sense, liberal.
Michael Novak, The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism

Action

The incentive that impels a man to act is always some uneasiness... But to make a man act [he must have] the expectation that purposeful behavior has the power to remove or at least to alleviate the felt uneasiness.
Ludwig von Mises, Human Action

Churches

[In the] higher Christian churches… they saunter through the liturgy like Mohawks along a string of scaffolding who have long since forgotten their danger. If God were to blast such a service to bits, the congregation would be, I believe, genuinely shocked. But in the low churches you expect it every minute.
Annie Dillard, Holy the Firm

Conversion

“When we received Christ,” Phil added, “all of a sudden we now had a rule book to go by, and when we had problems the preacher was right there to give us the answers.”
James M. Ault, Jr., Spirit and Flesh

Living Law

The recognition and integration of extralegal property rights [in the Homestead Act] was a key element in the United States becoming the most important market economy and producer of capital in the world.
Hernando de Soto, The Mystery of Capital

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