The Unrepentant Boomer's Last Stand

In his recent rant against the ungrateful children of the Baby Boomers, (“This Boomer Isn’t Going to Apologize” Wall Street Journal June 19, 2009) Stephen Moore, the Journal’s senior economics writer, repudiates the “guilt and grief” expressed by repentant Baby Boomer commencement speakers, and attacks the sense of entitlement ascribed to recent graduates he dismisses as the “echo generation.”

Methinks Moore doth protest too much and repent too little. In extolling the legacy of the Baby Boom generation and chastening their children, Moore tacks along the economists’ lee shore with “lies, damn lies and statistics.” As Mark Twain observed: “Facts are stubborn things, but statistics are more pliable.” Mr. Moore’s takes full advantage of that pliability, selectively citing small waves of statistics favorable to his argument while ignoring statistical tsunamis that would swamp it.

Laughably, Mr. Moore’s view of the younger generation of Americans is formed by personal class and race blinders. For him, the echo generation is comprised of iPod-designer-cell-phone-laptop-toting, Beverly Hills 90210 “trust-fund babies” rather than children of the mean streets of South Central L.A., Harlem, Houston’s 3rd Ward, Southside Chicago or Boston. (How many of them have trust funds?) Class-tinted glasses may explain his lopsided perception of ‘increasing affluence’ for children and benign view of childhood hardship today.

For example, he states: “This is a generation that has come to regard rising affluence as a basic human right, because that is all it has ever known -- until now.” Rising affluence? According to the National Center for Children in Poverty: “Over 13 million children in the United States—18% of all children—live in families with incomes below the federal poverty level—$22,050 a year for a family of four. Research shows that, on average, families need an income of about twice that level to cover basic expenses. Using this standard, 39% of children live in low-income families. . . . The number of children living in poverty increased by 15 percent between 2000 and 2007. There are 1.7 million more children living in poverty today than in 2000.” Facts are stubborn things.

He trivializes “this generation's notion of hardship” as “the TiVo breaking down.” No mention of getting shot in the streets or in school, or winding up in jail, an outcome five times more likely for blacks than a whites, according to the Department of Justice.

Moore’s most egregious howler is dismissing the national debt the younger generations will inherit. He says: “The echo boomers complain, rightly, that we have left them holding the federal government's $8 trillion national IOU.” In point of fact, the national debt in the hands of the public is closer to $6 trillion; but who’s counting? Certainly not Moore -- or he would have had to fess up to the fact that $6 trillion represents an $80,000 debt burden for every one of the 75 million young men and women who will soon have to shoulder the national debt. (Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you enjoy the play?) Rather than admitting that the national debt was created by his and his parent’s generation skipping out on taxes needed to pay for current government services, Moore instead resorts to the magician’s staple, misdirection: “But try to cut government aid to colleges or raise tuitions and they act as if they have been forced to actually work for a living.” A classic case of ‘blame the victim.’

Here’s where Moore becomes bizarrely self-contradictory: “Yes, the members of this generation will inherit a lot of debts, but a much bigger storehouse of wealth will be theirs in the coming years. When I graduated from college in 1982, the net worth of America -- all our nation's assets minus all our liabilities -- was $16 trillion, according to the Federal Reserve. Today, even after the meltdown in housing and stocks, the net worth of the country is $45 trillion -- a doubling after inflation. The boomers' children and their children will inherit more wealth and assets than any other in the history of the planet -- that is, unless Mr. Obama taxes it all away.”

Brave words, along the lines of “Patience, my children, someday all this will be yours.” However, that’s a strange remark coming from someone railing against the ingratitude of the younger generations. With all the antipathy he bears toward them, one wonders why the conservative Mr. Moore would not prefer Mr. Obama to restore financial stability to the U.S. government, rather than pass along this unparalleled “storehouse of wealth” to a pampered generation of “ingrates.”

Moreover, with American’s net worth falling 18% in 2008 alone, the vast “storehouse of wealth” may not be so formidable after the rich Boomers get through screwing up the economy and spending their fortunes liberally on gold-plated retirement. With the $6 trillion national debt skyrocketing and national wealth plunging, the younger generations can be excused for feeling uneasy about their inheritance, most of which will go to the children of the obscenely rich.

In fairness, the can of worms being handed to younger generations isn’t all the Baby Boomers’ doing. The “Greatest Generation” did their bit, during the Johnson and Nixon years by sending 55,000 Baby Boomers off to Vietnam to be slaughtered for no good reason and bringing the U.S. to the verge of civil war. Despite the warnings of two Oil Shocks in the 1970s, the Greatest Generation did nothing to end our addiction to oil, the price of which we are paying for in the aftermath of the Third Oil Shock today. Whereas in 1973 we imported about 1/3 of our oil we now import well over half, with much of the money finding its ways into the coffers of those who mean us harm. During the Reagan years the Greatest Generation also introduced us to “Voodoo Economics” – the cockamamie notion that lowering tax rates would increase government revenues – launching the era of government mega-deficits expanded under Bush II’s neo-Reaganomics to bring us to the $6 trillion national debt today and Dick Cheney’s pearl of wisdom: “Deficits don’t matter.” So it’s no wonder, that Moore and his generation “cursed our parents,” as he says. It was they who set us on the path to financial ruin by instilling the tax-cut, favor-the-rich, borrow-and-spend, stay-addicted-to-oil mindset we labor under today.

Moore asks: “How bad can the legacy of the baby boomers really be? Let's see: We're the generation that spawned Microsoft, Intel, Apple, Google, ATMs and Gatorade. We defeated the evils of communism and delivered the world from the brink of global thermonuclear war. . . . Do they expect us to apologize for winning the Cold War next?” Thanks. But what happened to the ‘Peace Dividend’? And why am I more afraid of enemy attack now, after 9/11, than I was during the Cold War?

What Moore isn’t telling is that the risk of thermonuclear exchange during the Cold War was ameliorated by rational instincts for self-preservation on both sides underlying the policy of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD). Under George W. Bush, the Baby Boomers bequeathed future generations a more probable threat of thermonuclear war with a suicidal adversary sublimating rational instincts for self-preservation to the call of religious jihad, fueled by ill-conceived, poorly-executed U.S. invasions of their “holy ground.” We have replaced MAD with just plain mad. The Doomsday Clock has been moved forward from midnight minus 17 minutes after the Cold War ended to midnight minus 5 minutes today, which is nearly as bad as it was during the Cold War at its chilliest. That’s a legacy for which the Baby Boomers might consider apologizing.

Moore rants on: “Now youngsters are telling pollsters that they think socialism may be better than capitalism after all.” Well, at least the countries Moore might call “socialist” have universal, affordable health care with far greater cost efficiency than ours, and better outcomes too, instead of class-based healthcare leaving 47 million lacking health insurance, one major disease away from bankruptcy.

Undeterred, by such damning facts, Moore calls criticism of the U.S. health system as “the most absurd complaint of all.” He falls back on pliable statistics: “Thanks to massive medical progress in the past 30 years, the chances of dying from heart disease and many types of cancer have been cut in half. We found effective treatments for AIDS within a decade. Life expectancy has risen and infant mortality fallen.” What Moore does not mention is that measured by such objective standards as life expectancy and infant mortality, the U.S. ranks 37th in the world, right between Costa Rica and Slovenia, and well behind all our “socialist”-leaning European counterparts, according to the World Health Organization. Facts are stubborn things.

Moreover, upbeat U.S. health care statistics are cold comfort to the 47 million Americans denied access to a private health care by a system which routinely excludes the poor, the unemployed and those with pre-existing conditions, and employs fewer care givers than administrators whose function in life is to “delay, deny and deceive.” Nor does Moore mention the plague of obesity and related health-care expense associated with a food system dedicated to pushing fat, salt and sugar like dope.

Moore concludes: “My generation is accused of being environmental criminals -- of having polluted the water and air and ruined the climate. But no generation in history has done more to clean the environment than mine. Since 1970 pollutants in the air and water have fallen sharply. Since 1960, Chicago, Houston, Los Angeles and Pittsburgh have cut in half the number of days with unsafe levels of smog. The number of Americans who get sick or die from contaminants in our drinking water has plunged for 50 years straight.”

Maybe so, but in another “Other-than-that-Mrs.-Lincoln…” moment, Moore dismisses the environmental threat of global warming with a mind-bending non-sequitur: “Whenever kids ask me why we didn't do more to combat global warming, I explain that when I was young the "scientific consensus" warned of global cooling.” So what? When the facts change, sensible people change their minds. One need only look at the alarming satellite photographs of the disappearing polar ice caps to know global warming is real. Yet once again, Moore resorts to misdirection, blaming the victims: “Today's teenagers drive around in cars more than any previous generation. My kids have never once handed back the car keys because of some moral problem with their carbon footprint -- and I think they are fairly typical.” What this demonstrates is that youngsters don’t yet know the scope of the environmental disaster being handed to them because the Baby Boomers and WWII generations keep concealing it from them with endless calls for ‘further study’ rather than action.

To the Boomer who won’t apologize for his generation’s legacy, I would simply quote the unknown author who said: “An apology is a good way to have the last word.” Or Tryon Edwards’ admonition: “Right actions in the future are the best apologies for bad actions in the past.”