Baby Boomers are spoiled, greedy and selfish | Letter to the editor
Baby Boomers inherited from our parents a host of progressive benefits that we have squandered at the expense of our children and grandchildren. We were given a strong middle-class economy that included good union jobs, rising real wages, social security, Medicare and a progressive tax structure. The latter transferred wealth from the rich to pay for massive infrastructure investments that included interstate highways, airports, and subsidized scientific research and colleges. Our generation thrived on the opportunities these public investments provided and many of us were able to retire comfortably with real private pensions and employer paid health insurance.
Unfortunately, the future for our children and grandchildren will be far worse off. We allowed regressive forces in this country to neglect, erode and destroy many of the progressive benefits and protections we were bequeathed. Environmental and health regulations are being systematically dismantled with no regard to the long-term effects. We spent trillions and sacrificed far too many of our young on needless and near-constant wars. We froze and even reduced taxes (mostly on the rich) while ignoring the inflation that eroded workers’ wages and ballooned the deficits that are accumulating at the rate of a trillion dollars a year!
Our children cannot possibly pay our national debt when their wages have not kept up with inflation, their college and health care costs have skyrocketed, and they are now expected to save for their own retirement. We’ve saddled them with this massive debt and private expense increases by allowing conservative dogma to dictate policy. Trickle-down economics was proven a fantasy thirty years ago, yet we still hear this nonsense. Its time to reverse course to save the middle class. The old saying “when you find yourself in a hole, quit digging.” seems appropriate here.
David Dean
Myakka City
This story was originally published January 28, 2020 at 8:38 AM with the headline "Baby Boomers are spoiled, greedy and selfish | Letter to the editor."