Teachers unions, Wall Street Fat Cats, Bought and Paid For Politicians, Lobbyists, Entitlement junkies… The list is endless. Depending on your political persuasion – right or left, as it seems the malleable masses are neatly divided - everybody has a personal boogieman to blame for the McDepression.
And each of these groups shares some blame, to a small degree. But the real dividing line between the villains and the victims, if we must pit one sector of society against another, isn’t based on tax bracket, or government versus private employment, or any other of the other peripheral differences the media stokes to create wars of ideology. The real dividing line is age.
Summed up in a slogan, our reaction to the financial downturn has been this: Steal the Futures of the Young to Pay for the Twilight of the Old.
Bernanke hasn’t propped up Wall Street with profligate easing because he’s an incorrigible Keynesian, or because lobbyists have pressured him on behalf of “The Goldman Sachs.” Congress hasn’t ignored unemployment among the young, instead focusing on diversions like the deficit, or wealth disparity, solely because its isolated from Main Street. The real reason our government’s, and the Fed’s, policy reactions to the downturn have focused on propping up assets, rather than fixing unemployment, is:
1. We have a lot of old people in this country, with more and more Baby Boomers joining those ranks every day;
2. Many of these people have barely enough money for retirement, if they’re lucky;
3. They all live off investment income, rely on Medicare, and refuse, or cannot, pay for a greater portion of their health care; and
4. If their portfolios collapse, unlike the young, they can not, even theoretically, go out and find new work to support themselves.
Perhaps this was all apparent to you long ago, and if that’s the case, I apologize for travelling well trodden ground. But for those of you who’ve not already reached this conclusion, here’s seventy-five percent of the reason the Fed, and Washington, are ignoring employment and focusing exclusively on asset inflation:
If asset values were to fall as they should have in a true free market collapse, an enormous percentage of the old and elderly would be rendered insolvent. We would have a societal disaster on our hands.
And so we decided to screw the more resilient generation – the young – to protect the old.
Read the rest of this piece here.
As a young person, I’ve been able to understood why the older generation, the “fat cats” and even the media, deflect these real issues and avoid these real solutions. But I’ve never understood why so many young people–the people who *are* being screwed–don’t take the time to understand the real problems and spend their energy trying to solve them. How many young people do you know interested in discussing real, tangible ways to rebuild the economy (and our future). How many political science majors** have their eyes set on real change? Instead they wait for radio head on the Brooklyn Bridge and tell themselves they’re revolutionaries.
I’d argue most of the 18-25 year olds I know are the *first* to cling wildly to the left or right, and regurgitate the hot button issues the media promotes. I wonder what it will take for our generation to finally understand that we’ve inherited some formidable problems that are going to require a new way of thinking.
* Political science majors, amazingly, seem the most clueless about our real political problems
PL: “Bread and circuses” is the easy cynical answer. But that’s only half of it. Fifty percent of people are, well, idiots – easily bought off with gadgets and amusements. Their focus doesn’t stray anywhere beyond pop culture, and shit pop culture at that. The other fifty – the non-lowest-common-denominator – are the far more interesting of the two. They seem to think:
a. They can win the rigged game (some can, but more could if the rules were adjusted in a fashion that put us on a more sustainable economic trajectory);
b. Until it immediately impacts them (when it’s too late), it’s Someone Else’s Problem; and
c. There’s no solution.
When the bad Populist tax policies that follow these sort of economic resets are employed (and they will be), the bill will fall on the upper middle classes. Exactly the kids in the latter 50% a few years after graduation.
Better to deal with it now. But as many anthropologists far smarter than us have noted, most people, particularly in matters political, do nothing until a situation becomes dire. The majority of society tries desperately to hang onto the status quo, and when the govt can’t hold it for them through some policy fix anymore, they then pretend Everything Is Fine! At that point, it all goes to shit.
Don’t be afraid of what might happen when fearful stories about Greece defaulting hits the markets and our economy, or stories about any other priced-in events subject to doom and gloom discussion. Be afraid of what will follow periods of artificially-created calm. It’s when things seem too good to be true in light of the underlying data that something craters, a raft of bad news comes out suddenly, the curtain is lifted and emperor is found to be naked once more, and things get truly troubling.
We’re bullshitting ourselves in so many ways right now. Things could implode, and at shocking speed, and yet the surface appears somewhat placid. The perception management at work is amazing.