It's a penny-wise and pound-foolish approach to governance. Just as we can track the demise of once healthy corporations to cost cutting for short term profits in exchange for long term gains, we can track the rise and demise of civilizations for its investments in itself.
But more importantly, we are setting up a generational conflict between young people who are asked to pay for rapidly increasing benefits to an aging population while being shortchanged themselves. How long will a jobless college grad, for example, tolerate skyrocketing health care or social security cost increases they suspect they’ll never benefit from?
Michael O'Hare, Professor of Public Policy at UC Berkley, obviously had the same in mind when he penned this letter of apology to his students.
The bad news is that you have been the victims of a terrible swindle, denied an inheritance you deserve by contract and by your merits. And you aren’t the only ones; victims of this ripoff include the students who were on your left and on your right in high school but didn’t get into Cal, a whole generation stiffed by mine. This letter is an apology, and more usefully, perhaps a signal to start demanding what’s been taken from you so you can pass it on with interest.
He goes on later..
This deal held until about thirty years ago, when for a variety of reasons, California voters realized that while they had done very well from the existing contract, they could do even better by walking away from their obligations and spending what they had inherited on themselves.
There’s also a response to a note by former Secretary of the Treasury Robert Reich here.
I’m very interested in the way he puts this in terms of an intergenerational contract. An agreement to invest in youth and leave to them investments that will make them an economic success. In return we care for them as they get to an age where they can no longer provide for themselves.
If we continue to govern on the philosophy that government is only worth what it benefits us personally, this country is doomed. We will never compete with a rising China or resurgent Europe. Already the US, which once had primary and secondary education advantages over the rest of the world, sees itself falling well behind the rest of the developed world.
This is not the model of a society designed for success any more. While we spend trillions preparing for global wars of the last century, we are leaving ourselves unarmed to compete in the new conflict… economics.
