
Why baby boomers’ grandchildren will hate them - howard941
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/09/17/why-baby-boomers-grandchildren-will-hate-them/
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simonblack
"All horses are animals, but not all animals are horses." The Boomers are all
being blamed for the actions of some of their members.

The Boomer Generation is concurrent in time with Corporatism. It's Corporatism
and its Boomer CEOs and lobbyists which are the causing the problem, not the
rank and file Boomers.

But in the end, all Boomers will be blamed. The same as all Germans of the
relevant generation were blamed for being Nazis.

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joelx
I strongly agree that the baby boomer generation will not be looked on well by
history as this generation:

-Took massive debt to pay for entitlements that will eventually have to be paid for by their grandchildren.

-Elected politicians based not on competence but on relatives (Bush, Clinton), or on easily disproved false pretenses (Trump).

-Encouraged and allowed the growth of special interest industries that damaged the country (patent lawyers, AMA increasing healthcare costs, etc). This destroyed free markets.

-Fought massively expensive foreign wars with their kids and grandkids without end goals and strictly limited troops rules of engagement with misguided morality.

-Destroyed legitimate political debate in favor of simply screaming that your side is right and endlessly saying "what about Hillary" or "what about Trump" instead of engaging on issues.

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rdtwo
I don’t understand how it’s possible to generationally take “...massive debt
to pay for entitlements that will eventually have to be paid for by their
grandchildren”

The debt is there but really it’s a wealth redistribution/accounting problem.
Someone owns the other side of the debt, and considers it an asset so in
aggregate it’s a net zero.

The problem really is that debt that can’t be paid won’t so are we really just
looking at some sort of large scale accounting trick where someone is more
wealthy than they actually are.

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joelx
If we don't pay the national debt, the US economy would suffer enormously.
Eventually people would lose trust in the US dollar itself causing
hyperinflation which leads to the worst disasters in modern history.

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howard941
That won't happen unless idiots run the Treasury because it's easily rolled
over into new bond issues. The worst of the lies are the ones justifying
needlessly painful austerity that get trotted out every couple of months
equating sovereign debt with household debt. And a little bit more (not hyper)
inflation instead of this disinflation we're stuck in would be very helpful to
debtors.

