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--></style><title>Washington Post : How did US economy go
wrong?</title></head><body>
<div><font face="Times" size="+1" color="#181818">Washington Post,
Friday, November 6, 2015</font><br>
<font face="Arial" size="-1" color="#1A1A1A"></font></div>
<div><font face="Times" size="+1" color="#181818"><b>Baby boomers are
what's wrong with America's economy</b></font><font face="Arial"
size="-1" color="#1A1A1A"><br>
</font><font face="Times" size="+1" color="#1D1D1D"><b>They chewed up
resources, ran up the debt and escaped
responsibility.</b></font><font face="Arial" size="-1"
color="#1A1A1A"><br>
<br>
</font><font face="Arial" size="-1"
color="#0040C2"><u
>https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2015/11/05/baby-boo</u
></font><font face="Arial" size="-1"
color="#1A1A1A"
>mers-are-whats-wrong-with-americas-economy/?hpid=hp_hp-more-top-stor<span
></span>ies_pe-babyboomers-915am%3Ahomepage%2Fstory</font></div>
<div><font face="Arial" size="-1"><br>
</font><font face="Geneva" size="-1">Excerpt:</font></div>
<div><font face="Geneva" size="-1">"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."</font></div>
<div><font face="Geneva" size="-1"><br>
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.<br>
<br>
It's also bad economics.</font><br>
<font face="Geneva" size="-1"></font></div>
<div><font face="Geneva" size="-1">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.</font><font face="Arial"
size="-1" color="#1A1A1A"><br>
<br>
</font><font face="Arial" size="-1"
color="#0040C2"><u
>https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2015/11/05/baby-boo</u
></font><font face="Arial" size="-1"
color="#1A1A1A"
>mers-are-whats-wrong-with-americas-economy/?hpid=hp_hp-more-top-stor<span
></span>ies_pe-babyboomers-915am%3Ahomepage%2Fstory</font></div>
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<div><font face="Lucida Grande" size="-1"
color="#000000">================================<br>
"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."<br>
<br>
"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!"<br>
<br>
John K. Galbraith. "How much should a country consume?"<br>
In Jarrett, Henry (editor),<i> Perspectives on Conservation</i>.<br>
John Hopkins Press. 1958<br>
================</font></div>
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