I'm 59. I don't remember doing that. (And are we actually broke?) I do remember voting. Everyone I voted for said one thing to me, and did what they were told by their donors and the MIC.
I hope I live long enough to see what the currently upcoming generations get blamed for in their old age.
Any time there is a budget deficit, there is borrowing. The borrowing is done against future earnings by future taxpayers. Now it seems to me that if money is borrowed and not paid entirely back within a generation, then those who borrowed have essentially stolen wealth from their children and grandchildren.
That's (if the unit of analysis is "us", as in the country, rather than the government itself) arguably loosely analogous to one piece of one's personal debt exceeding 100% of annual income, and not at all the definition of being broke.
> Is there any sort of plan to repay that debt in a lifetime? No, not really.
That's having long-term structural debt, which, again, is nothing like being broke.
> A lot of people would consider that broke.
I don't really think that's true. The government is neither unable to pay its current obligations (it occasionally approaches choosing not to do so, but is nowhere close to being unable to do so).
If a generation inherits a better world than they leave to their kids, I don't think they get to blame how hard it would have been to have done better. The buck's got to stop somewhere.
And having failed to do little but enrich themselves, at the very least your generation can stop talking about lazy and entitled the younger generation is. The hypocrisy is staggering.
Those nominated for the Supreme Court come from a short list of federal judges and other legal wonks. No average voter has any idea of the name of any of these people. Therefore, they cannot be said to be voting on a candidate based on their Supreme Court picks, except in the most liberal/conservative sense.
Case in point: Merrick Garland. He was on everyone's short list, including mentions by Republican leaders as a candidate who could be confirmed by the Senate. But the average voted hadn't heard his name before he was nominated by Obama.
It's really the political class that sold us out to privatization and globalization. That's where the buck stops. It happened regardless of who was voted in. Both parties were captured, and 3rd parties are not a realistic option in our system. We are /not really/ a democracy.
To the extent that's true, its the result of major party primary elections and other processes and the decisions voters made in those (including the decision to stay out of them.)
I can understand that many people did not / would not show up, though. That's a problem...
"Whoever is responsible, it's not me and my friends!"
> No average voter has any idea of the name of any of these people.
"I would like to not do any research, because taking responsibility is hard"
> the average voted hadn't heard his name before he was nominated by Obama.
Which is fine. The average voter knew (or should have known) what Obama stood for. What Bush stood for. What Clinton stood for. And so on. They could've then reasonably inferred what kind of judges they'd pick. And by looking at the age of SCOTUS judges, you have a good guess when replacements happens.
The only judge where you could've made the case is surprising given who nominated them is Scalia - he tipped a bit further on issues than Reagan.
Merrick is right in line with everything Obama ever stood for. Nobody is surprised that Obama would nominate a centrist with slight liberal leanings. The particular name might be unknown, but the choice isn't.
> It's really the political class that sold us out to privatization and globalization.
That political class didn't come into life fully formed. People voted for them, and shaped the direction of politics. And they're there because of money in politics. Which points us right back at the Supreme court, via Buckley vs. Valeo. (and Citizens United vs. FEC)
(Not to mention that many people liked the initial effects of globalization and privatization. It's not like nobody voted for NAFTA, e.g.)
That sounds like demonizing a whole anonymous group based on personal perceptions.
Her/his point was, I think, that, even people in a democracy, have very little control over what policies are followed. And that you will see that happening to you, too.
> If any generation had the power to change things how things ended up today, it was yours. To pick one example: all the supreme court justices who presided over the Citizens United case were appointed during your prime years.
The laws overturned in Citizens United had only been on the books a scant few years, and those laws made exercises of free speech illegal.
Whether or not big money in politics is a problem, the Citizens United decision was decided in favor of free speech moreso than in favor of dark money, and it's quite likely that if you voted for the presidents who appointed the majority justices in citizens united that you also voted for the guy whose law was overturned by it. Ergo, casting it as a one-side versus the other form of complicity does not work.
You specifically, unlikely.
Your generation brought in Reagan. Your generation (along with Gen X) pretty much has run the government since 2000. The great shift to the right was largely your doing and would never have been sustained if your generation wasn't what it was. :/
http://www.people-press.org/2015/04/30/a-different-look-at-g...
You brought the country so far to the right your generation actually flipped from R to D. It was truly quite the amazing transformation from relative sanity to batshit crazy. It completely obliterated balance in this country.
http://www.vox.com/2016/7/25/12256510/republican-party-trump...
> “Goldwater’s nomination in 1964 was a historical disaster for the conservative movement,” Roy tells me, “because for the ensuing decades, it identified Democrats as the party of civil rights and Republicans as the party opposed to civil rights.”
For better or worse, your generation and Gen X has to own the shift to the right in this country because you are largely the generations responsible for it. That rightward shift has gutted everything the Millenials depended on to climb economically from schools to infrastructure to rational tax policies.
Generation X was under 18 when Reagan was elected.
You speak to your friends, you do what you can within your life, you support justice and oppose actual evil (not sloganed evil). You respect respectful people of all politics. You play with your kids and hope for the best.
You need to realize it isn't personal against you.
If a majority of a group vote in favor of X, they bear some responsibility for it. Particularly when they don't rebuke it after the fact.
> People have a right to speak, and to vote for their direction. Sometimes people win, sometimes people lose. Sometimes things go really badly, but we can't all be President or members of Congress.
Obama and HRC were (economic policy wise) 60s Republicans. Modern Republicans are basically Reagan-derivatives.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2015/11/05/...
> One moment in the third Republican presidential debate encapsulates everything terrible about baby boomers and the way they’ve pillaged the U.S. economy. It came from Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, a Generation Xer, who offered the standard line — you can hear it from the mouth of almost any American politician today — on how to keep Medicare and Social Security solvent. Rubio defended the idea that future workers will need to retire later or receive fewer benefits from those safety-net programs than current retirees. “Everyone up here tonight that’s talking about reforms,” he stipulated, was “talking about reforms for future generations. Nothing has to change for current beneficiaries.”
I don't feel the need to be polite about it when elected politicians are comfortable stating their plan to "reform" the system is to screw me and people my age in favor of another group of people.
Actually, if Trump wins, they'll get blamed for Donald Trump. Each and every one of them. :)