perfidy

Reason has a good piece up on how old people are determined to loot the store before they die.

"We have been hearing for years about economic fallout that will surely result from the coming social security binge, but few could have anticipated the real threat baby boomers represent. Not content to suck resources from a dying system, the Me Generation has formed a massive voting bloc willing to grant itself one-size-fits all benefits. Last month, in an orgy of self-love, the 108th congress (average age: 55) helped itself to the one resource younger generations will always be good for: future earnings. Every great legislative push needs its welfare queen, and this time around the subject is a hypothetical elderly widow, forced to decide between food and pharmaceuticals. She exists, surely; the small segment of the population too wealthy for Medicaid yet too poor to make ends meet is more than a trick of rhetoric. Unfortunately, she is being used to extort benefits for everyone over 65, the vast majority of whom don't need them, many of whom are active voters. The elderly are easily the wealthiest segment of society, with a poverty rate little more than half that of the under 18-set who will help foot the bill."

This is deeply troubling, and totally outrageous. I'm beginning to think that the greatest legacy of the 'boomer generation was not social revolution, not civil rights, not orchestral Album Oriented Rock, but rather an overweening, nasty, vicious, grasping, deeply rooted sense of entitlement. 

The Baby Boom generation is the last generation of American citizens who can reliably claim that they have it better than their parents. They were raised in a time of unprecendented growth and plenty, and feel themselves to be both the heirs of greatness and the architects of the good aspects of today's America. 

Partly this circumstance can be attributed to the boomers' placement at the natural endings of a great number of intiatives, social changes, and economic successes. The greatness they think they chose was rather handed to them on a silver platter. That is beyond their control. What is not beyond their control, however, is the conscious choice to be generous, to leave a crumb for future generations. To, in short, live up to the rhetoric they invented. 

The exact same crowd that forty years ago wasn't trusting anyone over 30, who planned breakfast in bed for 400,000, and who wished to bring an Aquarian age of equality and love, are now a mass of bitter greedy Croesuses determined to have everything regardless of the consequences. They were the last generation to grow up in the true boom years, and they can't seem to let go of the idea that there will always be more, more, more. 

Has the hippie ethos-- always a minority view, though vocal-- permeated the 'boomers so thoroughly that they no longer care about consequences? It sure must feel good to have the power to pass laws! It sure must feel good to vote your way to comfort! 

The party ended thirty years ago, the money has run out, yet they don't seem to have noticed. Or maybe they just don't give a crap.