Tom Friedman says we have eaten through the prosperity bequeathed upon us by The Greatest Generation

[BeyondGeography]

in today's column, which was an otherwise harmless assemblage of Freidmanesque platitudes masquerading as wisdom, but the generational aside did rankle.

This reader response is so dead-on, it's worth posting here:

I'm getting a little tired of paeans to the Greatest Generation linked to put-downs of the baby boomers. The differences between their eras might be less a matter of character than one of timing and demographics.

Those couples starting life together after WW II--a war deemed necessary and noble by the vast majority-- had the GI bill to help finance their educations and the purchase of their homes. Their numbers were smaller, so demand didn't hugely exceed supply. They stayed with jobs not out of loyalty to their employers but because they actually could. They were not bombarded day and night by ads trying to convince them they needed more than they could afford and by offers of credit every time they turned around.

Baby boomers had stiffer competition getting into college and many of them paid more, by themselves, with no help from the government. They were drafted into a war few people around the world supported. They struggled to raise children in a more hands-on manner than they had been raised. They were not just grasshoppers eating through the prosperity given to them. Many, many of them were loving parents and caring teachers, and some became loving children, cracking under the stress of caring for both children and parents. I myself moved my mother into my home while I was caring for my five-year-old after she suffered a stroke, and believe me, I never had a chance to live like a grasshopper.

There were, no doubt, grasshoppers who raised selfishness to a virtue. (Only what generation did Ayn Rand actually belong to?) There were those few who demanded freedom for corporations and praised globalization beyond all reason, laughing all the way to the bank while the jobs of many of us baby boomers began being outsourced. Our employers didn't offer us the pensions our parents had, and our 401 K's shrank as Wall Street faltered.

No doubt there are a great deal of truly wonderful people now in their eighties, but there are also a great many stellar baby boomers, now in their forties, fifties, and sixties. We should not be pitting generation against generation by comparing their characters. They lived in different worlds under different circumstances. We should instead be questioning the character and motives of the small percentage of us who are super-rich and got there by valuing personal wealth over society.

Maybe President Obama seems to be plugging up holes in the dyke because that is what he has to do, given the forces working against him rather than offering help. We needed compelling narratives from economists and journalists a long time ago, realistic narratives. We can't lay all this on our president. Perhaps your last sentence should have read, "If we all fail, Obama fails."

http://community.nytimes.com/comments/www.nytimes.com/2010/02/21/opinion/21friedman.html

With thanks to Elizabeth Fuller of Peterborough, NH.

[anonymous171]

1. Stagnant wages caused the debt problem, not advertising.

Typical Friedman bile.

[tabbycat31]

2. another great comment from the same article

North Carolina
February 21st, 2010
11:32 am
With all due respect Mr. Friedman--I think the press bears a certain responsibility here. They continue to report the news as if they are covering a tennis match--simply going back and forth--without ever noting that most of what the GOP is lobbing really should be out of bounds--lies, misinformation and out right fear mongering.

For example, as things stand now, when somebody like John Boehner steps out in front of the press and intones that he and the Republicans are fighting to stop a "total government take over of health care"--the press dutifully reports that--without ever once noting that no such take over is remotely in the offing--that Obama never supported even a total government takeover of health care insurance--let alone proposing nationalizing the entire industry.

Part of the problem we face right now as a nation is that a significant percentage of politicians--and one entire political party--has become convinced that they can lie with impunity--that any attempt to hold them accountable will be too late in the news cycle to be noticed--and that any that are noticed can be dismissed as partisan.

If you listened to the speakers at the Tea Party gathering last week--or CPAC this week--as I did, it was like having a window open into an entirely different universe--one where the federal government has already taken over and is running "the banks, the auto companies and the insurance companies"--one where Obama is a "Marxist-socialist" foreigner, intent upon some sort of Bolshevik takeover of the country--one where everyone's taxes have already gone up and their guns are about to taken away.

The fact of the matter is that a sizable percentage of the American public--I'd venture to say 20% are totally bent out of shape, up in arms and apparently on the verge of taking up arms--about things that simply aren't true or happening.

That's not a failure of Obama to craft some compelling narrative--it's shocking failure by the "free" press our founders invested so much time and energy into creating and safeguarding, to do what those founders believed was an essential service in the preservation of our liverty and nation--exposing frauds and fabulists, spinning falsehoods for their own partisan and personal gain.

At this point in time--it appears to be entirely possible that the American press is going to let the Republicans lie their way back into power--much as the press allowed the Bush/Cheney administration to lie this nation into a war of choice in Iraq.

[HeresyLives]

3. The prosperity came because of the war.

The world had been trashed, marriages and kids had been put off, and after the war everything boomed becauee the world had a huge demand to fill.

That demand has been over with for a long time.

[BeyondGeography]

5. And we were the only healthy team on the field

Amazing how Mr. Globalization himself apparently hasn't factored that into his thinking.

[HeresyLives]

6. Exactly.

Friedman was okay on technology, and I enjoyed reading that, but 911 threw him completely and he can't discuss politics for toffee. So maybe this question is too political for him?

[mediaman007]

10. Prosperity also came because our infrastructure was untouched. The rest

of the World had to rebuild from Hell.

[mulsh]

4. what gives anything this guy writes any importance?

Is it because he works for the NY Times? Is it because his editor makes sure the words are spelled correctly and the sentences don't run on endlessly? I'm not really sure.

[jsmithsen]

7. Friedman is probably a major Tea Party target

http://www.time.com/time/politics/article/0,8599,1964903,00.html

"The first is an explicit rejection of progressive philosophy. Until recently, progressivism was stowed on a dusty shelf of history, but many Democrats now embrace the label in place of the term liberal. It's an apt adoption. Like many Democrats today, the progressives of a century ago believed in the ability of social-science-minded intellectuals to analyze civic problems and engineer a way for government to tackle them."

I am certain the typical Tea Party rank and filer would respond positively if asked about Kucinich and would respond very negatively if asked about Friedman or David Brooks. Some of this is regional/cultural/ethnic; some if it is a rejection of "race to the bottom" globalization and the "yuppie" group which appeared to benefit from this. They might even wonder if the sudden shift from "race to the bottom" globalization to Obama-progressivism represents an attempted employment program for these same Yuppie professionals (a lot of Wall Streeters have plans to move to DC).

On the other hand the TPs can't point to a single point in US history when government wasn't involved in the economy. There was no pre Progressive golden age:

http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=10983

"In the election of 1888, Republicans called for tariffs to protect American manufacturing...
Protectionist tariffs remained the bedrock of economic policy of the Republican Party for the next 20 years. ...But as soon as the Republicans re-assumed power after World War I, they raised tariffs again. The Fordney-McCumber tariff of 1922 generally increased tariff rates across the board. However, it also gave the President power to raise or lower existing tariffs by 50 percent.

The infamous Smoot-Hawley tariff of 1930 was the last outrage inflicted by the Republican protectionists."

[KonaKane]

8. Is it OK if I don't give a wet fart what Freidie thinks?

He was on the wrong side of the Iraq War..SEVERAL times. He is one of these hacks who like to jump to the head of any parade as if they started it.

Sorry, he lost credibility with me long ago.

[Hissyspit]

11. And that money spent on the war was part of the squandering. Does he mention that?

[tularetom]

9. Never trust anybody named Friedman

Milton, Tom and probably Kinky as well.

[AllentownJake]

12. As a GenXer

As a Generation Xer here is what I see.

My grandparents grew up in a generation of chaos and built a structure to prevent the chaos, and my parents (babyboomers) spent their entire lives throwing out that system.

There were bad parts of my grand parents generation's system, but I think my parents threw out the baby with the bathwater.

[Odin2005]

13. I agree completely.