I see Chris Riemenschneider of the bankrupt Minneapolis Star-Tribune thinks I’m “dumping on” the younger generation:
Here’s some of the dumping I’m talking about: Mark Steyn of the National Review wrote of young Americans, “In the current crisis you guys were just goofing around at school, dozing through Diversity Studies and hoping to ace Anger Management class.”
Actually, the column in question made entirely the opposite point: that the “Greatest Generation,” the Boomers, Gen X and Gen Y were perpetrating against those high schoolers and their kindergarten siblings the greatest act of cross-generational theft in the history of mankind.
But if “young” Mr. Riemenschneider chooses to miss the point, so be it. Richard Fernandez gets it:
The Financial Times explains in numbers what Mark Steyn has asserted in words. We don’t have enough people to pay our bills. The advanced economies are piling up generational debt so fast they need to make children pronto so they can saddle them with unpaid obligations. Forget having kids because they’re wonderful; you need them to pay off the stimulus. The FT says the ageing bill will be a tsunami that will dwarf the current economic meltdown.
And just to clarify: for Japan, Russia, and Europe, we’re no longer talking about demographic-economic catastrophe just beyond the horizon — say, mid-century — but within ten years. If you’re not talking about this, you’re not serious. Which is why the O-man and the G-20 aren’t serious.