Jeff Goldsmith on Millennials: It's Your Money!

Congress is currently debating extending stimulus payments to local governments and adding yet another $80 billion in “emergency” spending to the federal deficit. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/37665192/ns/politics-washington_post

Where’s that money going to come from?  Well, we’re going to have to sell government bonds (to the Chinese) and Millennials will be paying them back for the rest of their lives.  We boomers will be long gone before those debts are paid off.  And millennials, who are pretty damned smart, haven’t made a sound about it. 

Last fiscal year, our federal government spent $1.6 trillion more than it took in. Some people called it “throwing money from helicopters”.    That money was simply added to the federal deficit.  We actually borrowed HALF of the money the federal government spent last year, a lot of it from foreign investors, and put it on the tab to be paid for by our young people, and THEIR children yet unborn. (Please reread the last four sentences and stop for a minute).   It’s simply not OK!

The spending pressure is coming from public sector unions:  teachers, healthcare workers, fire and police worker and other municipal employees.  In contrast to creating jobs (which government cannot do), stimulus measures “saved” jobs- averted layoffs, which preserves the flow of dues to labor unions. One third of the stimulus bill went to paying off the Democrats’ political debts to the public sector unions, who spent hundreds of millions of dollars in cash and campaign work to put them in office. 

How many millennials belong to labor unions?  My guess is: very few.  How many have pensions other than Social Security.  Try NONE?  Some of these public workers will retire at age 55 or earlier on pensions ranging from $35 thousand to over $100 thousand a year for the rest of their lives (e.g. another 25-40 years), with annual cost of living increases to make sure their living standards don’t decline. 

With real unemployment rates for young people in the 20’s, and many young people living in their parents’ basements because they cannot find jobs, you’d think millennials would have, as they say, “connected the dots”.

We COULD spend the money keeping public sector employees from having to make comparable sacrifices if we found offsetting cuts in other things, or raising taxes (on fatty foods or soft drinks, for example), without passing the buck to our young.  But that would require political courage and making choices.  Until the young wake up and realize that IT’S YOUR MONEY THEY’RE SPENDING, our politicians will keep on doing it.