This is truly an excellent explanation of the cross-roads that the developed world demographics have now reached. Impolite as it may seem to admit, as a generation, baby boomers have been selfish leaders: they have spent too much, saved too little and blew up the economy through excessive debt and reckless management. Moreover in general, the cohort remains unrepentant to this day. Most still believe they are entitled to harvest-a-plenty even though they pillaged the seed corn. But with 10,000 boomers a day retiring and a 1:1 worker to recipient ratio, the math simply does not work. That which is unsustainable will not serve. New thinking and plans are now required to revamp and right a lop-sided system that is disabling the next generation of workers. See: Generation X: An inconvenient era
“…So think again before you so easily dismiss the 25% unemployment rate and 3rd-world incomes of Generations X and Y and start with a short lesson on the problems of exponential functions.
Yet this terrible math leaves the question of what’s next? Can this unequal state of affairs remain a permanent feature of American life? Can the work of one group– the very hours of their life–be morally claimed and transferred to another by dictate? That is to say, does one generation have the right to enslave another, whether physically with chains they never earned, or financially with debts they never accrued? And if this transfer was voted into power by a generation and enforced by government dictate, why can’t Generation X and Y vote to transfer all the Boomers’ wealth back to themselves?
We don’t know at this time, but with the Dow at all-time highs it would seem that, one way or another, incomes and prices can only revert to the mean. And brother, speaking from the bottom, it’s a long way down to here.”
