During the big health care fight, the right told older Americans that Obamacare was grabbing money from their Medicare and giving it to young people. Now it tells young workers that Medicare and Social Security are draining their take-home pay to support retirees sitting around the pool.
The story, it would seem, moves from the young taking from the old to the old taking from the young. The one constant here is the motive: to weaken public support for government programs offering Americans a modicum of economic and health care security.
We can all agree that entitlement spending must be contained. The "how" of it is a big question. But the answer cannot be intergenerational warfare. And it need not be.
The storyline of the young being stripped by their elders has gotten a good deal of traction. Witness this headline on Charlie Cook's National Journal column: "Democrats Risk Alienating Young Voters by Opposing Cuts in Entitlement Spending."
Cook was referring to many liberals' complaints about President Obama's proposed budget, which would cut entitlement spending by about $800 billion over 10 years. Among other things, the plan would ask Medicare beneficiaries, particularly the well-to-do, to pay more. Most controversially, it would change Social Security's inflation formula in a way that would lead to smaller cost-of-living raises.
Obama's budget would begin to correct the imbalance reflected in the Urban Institute computation that Washington spends seven times as much per older American as it does per child. It would increase spending on education, on infrastructure, on research, on jobs — programs aimed at boosting an economy that has not been kind to younger workers.
This may be so, and that's no bad thing. The trouble with this conversation is that it avoids the real reason we're having it.
Yes, Medicare costs need restraining. And altering the inflation measure in Social Security — a program that's holy ground for many liberals — could be an acceptable, if painful, concession in budget talks.
But the origin of this phony war between the generations isn't so much how the budget pie is being cut by age group. It is the size of the pie.
Years of reckless tax-cutting has eaten away the revenues available to meet many national demands. This was the big rationale for cutting taxes. If you want to shrink government, conservatives kept saying, you have to cut off its allowance.
So all this carping in the richest country on earth that there's no money to fix the bridges — and that if it weren't for all those oldsters' entitlements, we'd have it — is absurd. So is the spiel that we can't guarantee health coverage to younger Americans without harming the elders' medical benefits.
The right talks about Obamacare as though achieving universal coverage were some kind of moonshot. Almost every other industrialized country has been doing it for decades.
Obama's budget offers a clever means of giving conservatives some of what they want, but it also names a price for them: $700 billion in new tax revenues. The proposal's main idea, limiting itemized deductions for the richest households, is well-chosen.
Rather than engage in hand-to-hand combat over ending this tax break or that one, lawmakers could simply put a cap on the total taken. That doesn't mean all loopholes make equal sense. (Some, such as the deduction for mortgage interest, should be phased out.) But smart tax reform is going to take time that we don't now have.
One last point. The aging baby boom generation will be large and expensive, but its members will eventually pass on, and the ratio of workers to retirees will stabilize. In sum, no generation need be the enemy of another.
To find out more about Froma Harrop, and read features by other Creators writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators webpage at www.creators.com.
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Ma'am; ... Eny old socialist with a first grade arithmatic could have told you that the idea of growing ourselves out of all our troubles in a closed system when most of our problems were already the result of growth was nutty..
People believe what they want to believe, and there is a lot of brand loyalty, left and right... Until people look for common ground, they will not find it and not have it... If the common ground they find is who to hurt, who to leave behind, who to toss over then it is only a matter of time before all are corrupted and all are thrown over...
There I times like this when I think we should dispute over a new national motto... Forget E Plueribus Unam... Consider: I got mine. amd I'm livin on chicken and wine... Or: Sink or Swim... Or money talks...
When I consider how much inflation has robbed from the value of the money only in my life time I have no reason to have peace with the government that can rob from my social security with inflation...You see what they want to do...
They made all sorts of promises to my generation and to our parents generation to get them to take less and help America beat communism... We were supposed to get pie tomorrow, when there was not such danger from the reds... People did not ask for more than what they needed, but counted on their government to act in their interest...It never occured to those poor idiots who never demanded democracy, who never raised the red flag of freedom that their government's idea of self interest could be so far different from their own... I worked... I got a pension, and I sacrificed to get it; but for the fact that I worked with others collectively to get my pension I was called everything up to and including a communist...Watch these bastards look at my income, and say I don't need the social security I worked for...Those people who will get it never worked as hard as me... I earned my money, and never worked a job where I did not contribute to Social Security... The government pissed that money away... That government mismanaged the situation to maximize profits and reduce taxes...They held the principal that what was good for business was good for America... Now let them prove it...
Now that business has had its way, and gotten everything it ever asked of government out of government, and all the while telling the people that our ever growing problems will fix themselves; let them prove it...
I think they have one hope that they are hard at... They hope one half of the people will kill the other half so they will not be obligated to support the poor any more, and can feast on all the capital the dead leave behind or can no longer use...Too many people eat up profits and capital... Where is a black plague when you need one???
Let me offer you the facts of life: When wages began to be taxed, property and wealth were relieved of taxation...People forced with their wages to support government as well as profit and themselves found they had to work that much harder, and that need reduced wages, and reduced wages that would not support families drove more women into the work forced which drove wages down more... Property relieved of taxation could be held for speculation, and so the land that every worker worked for was put further out of his reach as he worked for it... In order to have property the worker had to endure usury which the government supported with tax deferment on home mortage interests, but this just encouraged greater exploitation and usury which benefitted the government not in the least...Do any of these people in government have the smallest grasp of economics??? Do they understand the cost of exporting capital instead of products and importing products instead of exporting them... From the perspective of capital, if you can throw a net over the whole world, take all the resources, and control all the markets you can possible make the whole world a vast field of slaves, where people work for their survival, and others reap the entire benefit of their labor...We are being reduced to pawns on a board of pawns... We are being reduced through open competition with slaves... It was for that reason, to stop that uncontrolled competition with slavery that our civil war was fought...Now we find we did not go far enough... Now we find that the cooperation between labor and capital was only one way give...
There are a lot of us... Many of us are angry and frustrated... We are also uncouth, unintelligent, and uneducated...Talk radio uses our natioanal airwaves to pump poison into the ears of America, and America listens in and turns rotten, rottener, and rottenist...I do not doubt that the government can rob the old of their social security.... You can rob the young of their birth right too... But to go too far in the principal that all good will grow out of profit should bring a storm down on the heads of the government like nothing they have ever seen before...The people today are frustrated in trying to move the people who are trying to move them... If they worked together for even a moment to move the government in their direction the thing would fall down like a house of cards.... There is nothing there... This is a dying and rotten society; and though we are used to seeing the old robbed of what they could little use and never defend, if you have a mind for it, you will see this is the preliminaries to us all being finally and forever robbed of all our rights...
Ma'am;... It was always a good idea to throw people out of work when some one else was paying the bill... Now that we have too many to support, and only because so many jobs have been exported for the good of the rich, then it is time to think twice, take back our country again, and toss a lot of people out on their asses... The only reason you even worry about it is because you think the mess can be made to work... If our society was a car it would be in the junk yard, or in some hillbilly's front yard... It is not a lamp unto the world unless they have an eye for the oxidation of iron...
Thanks...Sweeney
Comment: #1
Posted by: James A, Sweeney
Thu Apr 18, 2013 7:12 AM
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Froma is the first person I've read or heard thats defending Obamas move to a CPI based social security. Funny thing is that it has a lot of other liberals up in arms. As a senator, Obama promised never to raise the retirement age or move to a CPI based system. Promises broken as he's done both. Obama and his fellow dems are doing this at the behest of Wall street, who funds all of their campaigns. You can't blame the republicans on this one. Its pretty clear that Obama has sold out to the bankers.
Comment: #2
Posted by: Chris McCoy
Thu Apr 18, 2013 9:15 AM
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Neither health care control nor health insurance control is an enumerated power granted to the federal government by The Constitution of The Republic of The United States of America. If Obama was really a Constitutional scholar he would know that. Obama and all of the other federal elected public servants took an Oath to preserve, protect and defend that Constitution. Side-stepping The Constitution is tantamount to an overt act of treason.
Comment: #3
Posted by: David Henricks
Thu Apr 18, 2013 9:55 AM
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Re: David Henricks;... Good is certainly an aim of government; or else why bother???... And the goods for which our constitution was written to achieve are clearly stated, and in addition, there is nothing in the constitution that denies the principal of life, liberty and happiness as human rights... You may want to explain how life, or happiness, or liberty can be possible without health... You may want to explain how justice, domestic tranquility, or general welfare could be possible without health care... Even to understand how your own health care would not be possible except on the backs of a great number of bill payers would be a triumph of the mind... The health system does not stand alone, and when it did, unregulated, unlicenced, and unsupported by government, it stook on rickety legs...
You can see for example how terrible our environmental protection is in regard to foreign species that stand to cost us billions, and eventually, lives... In the face of trade and travel spanning the oceans; how would you like it if your government stood aside to allowed our clocks to be cleaned by pandemics without a response...
A lot of you people on the right pray... Prayers to get well does not stop you from running to the doctors when you need to... How would you like a world where only prayers stood between you and death... I understand...I do understand...
The Pagans and the Heathens were the country people of Italy and England, respectively, whose prayers were answered by their traditional gods, so they were the last to convert... Because God has answered your prayers to date, you think you need no help from government, but it is because government has worked, even if not well, that your prayers have been answered... The government is the answer to your prayers... It is the answer to my sins... I was once one of those democrats willing to shack up with a republican for the illusion that everything was working... It was only working because the democrats made it work...
Sir;... There is no doubt about the ability of the government to tax, or to regulate commerce, though it has done little of either... In fact; we are living in a commonwealth, and those people with great estates should know that the wealth they hold so dear is our own, and that they have rights only in it... If we must enforce our title to this land to have it once again recognized by the rich, then so be it... Other wise they can manage to support all those dispossessed of the commonwealth, or give it back... There is no third option... People have to support themselves with the country and land, or, those who take it from them must support them with it...It was only a matter of efficiency... Big business could do it better, and run others out of business... They are still there, and the wealth is still theirs... If it really gets to an argument of the people against the rich for the ownership of the country and this government, who do you think will win???
Thanks...Sweeney
Comment: #4
Posted by: James A, Sweeney
Thu Apr 18, 2013 11:12 AM
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