Had a long conversation with my father the other day. At 85, he remains one of the most intelligent men I know, and the only one whose predictions about the future are consistently on the money. This is unfortunate because he is (for the first time since I've known him) no longer optimistic about the short-term future of the nation.
In particular, it concerns him that the Baby Boom generation (i.e., mine) is now cranking slowly into old age. As a result of the financial crisis of a few years back, very few of them have anything like the savings required to provide for them, or to pay for their medical care.
This means, he says, that society is effectively passing the bill for that care to the younger generation. Now, in prosperous times, that would not matter. If we knew something like the wealth of the 1960s or 1950s, then young people could afford to pay the tab without suffering themselves.
The problem is that we are not prosperous. We are in a Depression, even if we call it a Recession. Further, after decades of offshoring, downsizing, and "right-sizing" that Recession is simply not going to go away in a hurry.
Ah, but there is more. There were a great many Baby Boomers (that's why we were called the "boom"), but we tended to have relatively small families. Our children and grandchildren, in turn, had smaller families still—often one child or none. This means that a large and aging population has to be supported by a smaller and (in fact) dwindling one.
Alas, we are not finished yet. That smaller population of young people is in the midst of a vast social-economic-industrial transformation. For the first time ever, white-collar jobs are being automated. Machines are taking the place of "brain workers." Quite simply, as a nation we are not going to have many of the well-paying professional jobs that once guaranteed the existence of the Middle Class.
Then, finally, there are our wealthy. If the last few years have proved anything, it is that our economic leadership is incapable of seeing beyond its own bank accounts. Our wealthy will do anything to save themselves a few pence, even if that means the total impoverishment of the rest of the nation. (Yes, I know what Libertarians will say in response to that. But it is true all the same. Greed is not always good. Free markets do not inevitably lead to prosperity. Someday, travel through New England or visit Detroit and look at the abandoned mills, the shuttered buildings, and the shattered lives…the fruit of Neo-Liberal economies.)
All of this together makes my father …unhappy. He worries about the world his son and grandson will inhabit.
Which troubles me no end. I am used to being a bit despairing myself. But not him.
When a man of his vast spirit is daunted, I am afraid.
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