[MCN] Washington Post : How did US economy go wrong?

[Lance Olsen]

Washington Post, Friday, November 6, 2015

Baby boomers are what's wrong with America's economy
They chewed up resources, ran up the debt and escaped responsibility.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2015/11/05/baby-boomers-are-whats-wrong-with-americas-economy/?hpid=hp_hp-more-top-stories_pe-babyboomers-915am%3Ahomepage%2Fstory

Excerpt:
"Everyone up here tonight that's talking about (Medicare/Social 
Security) reforms," he stipulated, was "talking about reforms for 
future generations. Nothing has to change for current beneficiaries."

That's smart politics: The biggest generational voting bloc by far in 
the upcoming election will be baby boomers, a group that is just 
starting to draw its first Medicare and Social Security benefits - 
and does not want anyone messing with those benefits, thank you very 
much.

It's also bad economics.

Boomers soaked up a lot of economic opportunity without bothering to 
preserve much for the generations to come. They burned a lot of cheap 
fossil fuels, filled the atmosphere with heat-trapping gases, and 
will probably never pay the costs of averting catastrophic climate 
change or helping their grandchildren adapt to a warmer world. They 
took control of Washington at the turn of the millennium, and they 
used it to rack up a lot of federal debt, even before the Great 
Recession hit.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2015/11/05/baby-boomers-are-whats-wrong-with-americas-economy/?hpid=hp_hp-more-top-stories_pe-babyboomers-915am%3Ahomepage%2Fstory
-- 
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"Conservationists are unquestionably useful people. And among the 
many useful services that they have rendered has been that of 
dramatizing the vast appetite the United States has developed for 
materials of all kinds."

"But what of the appetite itself? Surely this is the ultimate source 
of the problem. If it continues its geometric course, will it not one 
day have to be restrained? Yet in the literature of the resource 
problem this is the forbidden question. Over it hangs a nearly total 
silence. It is as though, in the discussion of the chance for 
avoiding automobile accidents, we agree not to make any mention of 
speed!"

John K. Galbraith. "How much should a country consume?"
In Jarrett, Henry (editor), Perspectives on Conservation.
John Hopkins Press. 1958
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