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blue bits. red rocks.
Tuesday 2 March 2010

… [David] Brooks ultimately issues the familiar call for “geezers” to stop “taking money,” “taking freedom,” and “taking opportunity” from younger Americans. This is pretty powerful rhetoric, and it appears to have a receptive audience, with politicians from both parties wringing their hands about how spending on elderly Americans will supposedly harm our grandchildren. Long before he became a U.S. Senator, for example, Al Franken unexpectedly devoted a chapter of his book Rush Limbaugh is a Big Fat Idiot and Other Observations to arguing that we are cheating our children and grandchildren with overly generous entitlements. (Franken is, of course, generally considered to be a solidly liberal Democrat.) The problem is, this claim is simply not true. The current economic forecasts will not, if they come to pass, mean that future generations are worse off economically than we are. It is true that current generations are harming the interests of future generations, but that is because of our ongoing destruction of the planet, not because of the increase in the national debt. If we are going to use our grandchildren as emotional props in policy debates, therefore, we should be talking about global warming, not spending freezes. Neil H. Buchanan

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