Youth vs. Baby Boomers Is a Fake Economic Conflict

[Donnachaidh]

http://www.alternet.org/economy/151681/youth_vs._baby_boomers_is_a_fake_economic_conflict


Editor's Note: There is a growing trend in the corporate media to present the debt crisis as the instigator of generational strife. The latest major entry in that line of argument is Thomas Friedman's op-ed from The New York Times, "The Clash of Generations." This article explains why a youth vs. Boomers argument doesn't hold water.

In the midst of the current debt crisis, a conventional theme of the mainstream media has been that of inter-generational conflict. First, the current generation of senior citizens, as recipients of Social Security and Medicare, is charged with consuming resources that should be spent on the young. Second, baby boomers are charged with squandering the ample resources bequeathed to them by their parents, and passing our national debt to their children and grandchildren. Finally, for some critics, money for education is wasted not only on unionized teachers but on lackluster students.

From a perspective that emphasizes the ever-increasing wealth of this country and its dispensation over time, these claims prove to be clearly baseless. Given this enormous wealth, fundamental problems including the national debt can be understood in terms of the distribution of that wealth and income, and the shortfall of taxes that are currently being paid, especially by corporations and the wealthy. The grain of truth that remains from debunking generational critiques reflects an expensive for-profit healthcare system, not Medicare per se.

The federal Bureau of Economic Analysis currently uses 2005 "chained" dollars to generate apples-to-apples comparisons of our national and individual wealth over time. In these equivalent terms, our per capita gross domestic product (GDP) has increased from less than $16,000 in 1960 to over $25,000 in 1980 to over $43,000 in 2010. These are steady and real increases in goods and services produced per every resident by all American workers. One can think of each individual's $43,000+ as divided into portions that represent collective expenditures, from personal consumption to education to healthcare to the military.

More at the link --

[provis99]

1. the crisis isn't youth vs. Baby Boomers

it's the 99% vs the 1%, just like it's been since the dawn of written civilization.