Well, that’s my attempt to find a phrase to encapsulate the fundamental fiscal reality of our time. The boomer generation – apart from its inability to think about any cultural or foreign policy matter outside the context of 1968 – is enraging largely because it is so immeasurably selfish. The current mounting debt is a function of boomer selfishness: they want butter now (and even more when they retire) even though the rest of us will have to pay for it later. Steve Chapman points out that
economists Laurence Kotlikoff and Jagadeesh Gokhale say that a typical man reaching age 65 today will get a net windfall of more than $70,000 over his remaining years. A luckless 25-year-old, by contrast, can count on paying $322,000 more in payroll taxes than he will ever get back in benefits.
The latest boomer boondoggle, of course, is the $2 trillion Medicare drug benefit, a measure designed just in time to pamper the boomers through an endless retirement, and to give even more freebies to the wealthiest sector of society – purely because there are disproportionately more of them than the rest of us. I don’t know why the Deaniacs don’t see the injustice of this – except that Dean has to pander to senior greed like the rest of them. Do I sound angry? I guess I am. It’s hard enough listening to many of them preach about the moral purity of the Woodstock generation. But to have to pay for them to lecture us for decades to come really drives me nuts.
FROM THE MILITARY: Here’s a bulletin board where anonymous posters from what’s called the Special Operations community get to vent, chat and exchange views. The posters are responding to the story that several former generals have recently come out and urged a review of the military’s discrimination aainst homosexual servicemembers. Homo-hating is clearly alive and well in the military – which is what the official policy still reflects.
The Dish 