The baby boom and this generation’s attempts to turn it into a bust

They say the baby boomers, of which I am a part, are part of the longest-lived, most healthy, richest and luckiest generation in history, and now it seems we’re to blame for everything. National prosperity gave us houses to own, cars to lease and change every few years, and inflation wiped out our debt several times. And some of the baby boomers have gold-plated pensions (usually government pensions) whilst many others have 401k plans that are easily 10 times the per capita retirement savings of any previous generation. Coupled with that, Social Security provides a safety net no previous generation could rely on and Medicare and Medicaid have, up until now, given health security where no previous generation had any such hope.The argument being made is that our good fortune has been bought at the expense of future generations. The benefits we put into place will, somehow, saddle our children and future generations with unsustainable debt. There’s a younger age bandwagon rolling in Washington that paints baby boomers as greedy, rapacious spendthrifts that need to be cut back. However, all is not rosy for all the aging baby boomers. More than 5 million retirees live below the poverty line. These are the same people who worked in factories, worked hard to put their kids through school and paid taxes and Social Security contributions. They are the baby boomers who helped make this nation great. It is hard and unfair to pin generational guilt on them. Of course, there’s a bigger argument against blaming all baby boomers. Baby boomer parents had to save to be able to buy anything. Today’s generation can get it on credit and pay it off going forward. Today’s younger generations have benefits, opportunities, security systems in place largely paid for and put in place by the baby boomer generation. Yes, higher education is more expensive than it was 20 years ago and, yes, students’ loans are expensive. Wait a minute ... higher education is now 12 times as available per capita as it was in the 1950s and 1960s. And student loans are federally guaranteed and made available to every student across the nation whereas way back when they were not.Infrastructure has improved as well. People can own, maintain and conduct business from any computer, anywhere. Public transportation has tripled in 30 years. Interstate commerce has jumped tenfold since 1955 when measured in real value dollars. Baby boomers stopped compulsory military service, built an air traffic system moving people around the country, where previous generations mostly did not travel more than 100 miles from home. Cars? We’ve gone from 40 million cars total in the USA in 1955 to more than 260 million today. More cars mean they are also cheaper (as a proportion of mean salary). What’s the discount compared to the 1950s? About 350 percent cheaper. And on and on.u u uThe point of this article is that there’s a louder and louder auction of blame and resentment building in Washington which is both wrong and divisive for the nation. Part of that split of sentiment in Washington is built on the changing of the age of the teams there, and part of it is politicians wanting to blame somebody, anybody, regardless of truth, so the candidate can get re-elected on a platform of, “He caused your misery, elect me instead.” We’re all in this together. There is no question that today’s younger generation is having a tough time. Part of their dissatisfaction is because we made them promises based on a non-war growing economy that Reagan promised at the end of the Cold War. If you took today’s military budget and cut it in half (and got out of all foreign wars), we’d pay off the debt in three years and the economy would grow at 4 percent, unemployment would halve in two years and local taxes would stabilize or drop. And part of the problem facing the youth of today is that we are not addressing the big moral issues here. We are so busy picking over the bones of blame in Washington we’re not discussing what we want, what the nation needs going forward. No, we’re busy saying what we do not want, do not like and who’s to blame. We need, as a nation — and this is clearly the role of baby boomers and youth working together — to decide what we want the nation to look like in 10 years. Only by setting joint goals can the power and will of the whole nation be brought to focus. This is not a job for Washington, it is a job for grassroots America, it is a revolutionary job for American families spanning all generations. It’s not a discussion of what is not wanted, but what is wanted.Define the future America before the blame-game train wreck in Washington makes another series of horrible mistakes. Get talking!Peter Riva, a former resident of Amenia Union, now lives in New Mexico.