Obligation to Future Generations?

[Notmuchlonger]

They'll need a new cabinet member to head the Bureau of Erections.

Where do I sign up? People have called me a di never mind.

 

[ziggy29]

On a serious note, gen-Xers such as myself should know better than to justifiably rely on social security. I have accepted it and just view social security as yet another tax whose proceeds I will never benefit from. However, I find it disingenuous to call it “social security”.
Why not just call it what it is… Generational Theft. People continue to take out more than they put in.

Well, this has been going on in society for at least three decades, and arguably a bit longer. The "global economy" -- actually, the re-globalization of a post-WW2 economy temporarily dominated by American industry -- has eroded real American prosperity and economic growth since at least the 1970s, and we've had to increasingly borrow prosperity from future generations in order to avoid a decline in our own living standards. And the longer we remained in denial that post-WW2 ideal of the "American Dream" was unsustainable, the more we had to steal prosperity from our kids and grandkids to avoid having to make our own sacrifices in light of the changing economic realities. And eventually, that has its own practical limits which we seem to be hitting today.

We were building a house of cards which was stable for a while, but we've recently had the gust of wind which is sending it crashing down. It's now abundantly obvious that the "deal" middle class Americans were getting in the post-WW2 economy was the result of an economic bubble and can't be sustained.

Speaking generationally, perhaps Gen X is better positioned than many boomers because the Xers were much less likely to expect the government to be able to afford to take care of them, and thus having the "deal" taken away from them or watered down will be less cataclysmic for their financial future. In short, the Xers were more likely to be expecting this in their lifetime.

 

[bongo2]

It's a two-way street. To the extent that society can only continue to prosper as long as generations continue to honor moral and social obligations to other generations, it has to flow in all directions, both to those who come before us and those who come after us.

Yup. Well said.