One of the few redeeming qualities about Newsweak (not a typo) is the weekly column from Robert Samuelson.  This week he wrote a great piece calling out baby boomers for being overly selfish with regard to government funded entitlements - and their children and grandchildren will suffer as a result.

As someone born in late 1945, I say this to the 76 million or so subsequent baby boomers and particularly to Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, our generation’s leading politicians: shame on us. We are trying to rob our children and grandchildren, putting the country’s future at risk in the process. On one of the great issues of our time, the social and economic costs of our retirement, we have adopted a policy of selfish silence.

As Congress reconvenes, pledges of “fiscal responsibility” abound. Let me boldly predict: on retirement spending, this Congress will do nothing, just as previous Congresses have done nothing. Nancy Pelosi promises to “build a better future for all of America’s children.” If she were serious, she would back cuts in Social Security and Medicare. President Bush calls “entitlement spending” the central budget problem. If he were serious, he, too, would propose cuts in Social Security and Medicare.

They are not serious, because few Americans—particularly prospective baby-boom retirees—want them to be. There is a consensus against candor, because there is no constituency for candor. It’s no secret that the 65-and-over population will double by 2030 (to almost 72 million, or 20 percent of the total population), but hardly anyone wants to face the implications.

Read the rest for yourself.

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This entry was posted by Brian on Thursday, January 11th, 2007 at 7:44 am and is filed under Government Waste, Social Issues. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site. Please note the copyright policy.