By Dick Miller
WE.CONNECT.DOTS: As elders, we are the first generation that did not make it better for the one that follows. As American voters we have somehow elected a dysfunctional government. Our kids remain on battlefields impossible to vacate.
Higher education has become so expensive that school debt is now second, only to home mortgages. Because of failure to land a high-paying job, some of this school debt burden may also – directly or indirectly — be shouldered by aged parents.
President Ronald Reagan made business monopolies so much a strategy for growth that our corporations refuse to dally over innovation and outright beating the competition for market share.
He spent the Federal budget into oblivion, knowing that was one way to end large government as a solution. During the Reagan administration, the national debt increased 218%. Under George H. W. Bush it increased by another 55%. Bill Clinton had the lowest increase at 37% and then George W. Bush hiked the debt another 86%. President Obama – to date – has raised the Federal deficit 42% and may not even catch Bush 1 by the end of next year.
When the national debt got to where financing it at conventional rates would create insolvency, the Federal Reserve all but eliminated interest rates as a cost. Now financial nest eggs developed for retirement do not provide enough cash to live our later years in comfort. Banks didn’t lose. They got to add-on fees, increase others and continue to do deals that wrecked the economy in 2007-08.
Everything our government does plays to foreign policy, damn the consequences and many times the elderly pay the piper. The non-existent or ultra-low interest rates keep the cost of money down to prevent other nations from going bankrupt.
United States consumers pay most of the cost of development of drugs. We pay in higher prices. While Obamacare was debated, friends in Canada were worried our government – as the world’s largest buyer — would begin to negotiate prices for drugs. This could have had the effect of increasing drug prices in other countries.
We assured our Canadian friends that nothing like that could happen. Once our politicians have been bought by the drug companies, they stay bought.
The “donut hole” in Medicare drug plans hits the elderly unfairly. After a certain amount of purchases, we pay a higher price for drugs than just co-pays. Medicare is forbidden by Act of Congress to negotiate prices of drugs with the companies that supply them. That helps people everywhere else to pay lower prices for drugs. In many countries, the Government controls the prices. We don’t have price controls here because such a practice would run counter to a free market. That is our publicly stated purpose. Price controls also might reduce the amount drug companies give to Federal lawmakers for their campaigns.
Housing is another area where seniors take it on the chin. Time was that a home’s appreciated value would contribute greatly to the retirement nest egg. In too many regions now, you are lucky to get out of the home what you have in it.
If you do decide to return to work, looking for something you can handle in your old age, the pay doesn’t stretch. Even a sustainable minimum wage would benefit Walmart greeters.
Our Republican friends support this plundering of the elderly because their officeholders oppose abortion and support packing guns in churches and libraries. They continue to buy this garbage of anti-socialism, free markets, lower taxes and smaller government. Maybe they hope this system will help them become members of the one percent class.
Bottom Line: We don’t know yet if senior citizens will have to contribute even more to the benefit of the rest of the world. Some of our Federal legislators continue to drool at cuts in Social Security and Medicare to help balance the budget.
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Last week’s column on Harrisburg’s freewheeling handouts of economic development grants, loans and tax breaks had an error. We said there had been no evaluations performed in this “corporate welfare” of hundreds of millions each year. With apologies to Auditor-General Eugene DePasquale, we did not find our file on his comprehensive review published at the end of last year in time for that article.
General DePasquale also criticized the Department of Community and Economic Development from relying on self-reporting by the corporate benefactors to determine if job goals were met. His audit report included five findings and 13 specific recommendations for future job creation programs “to provide the level of accountability, transparency and oversight taxpayers deserve.”
I’m as disgusted as the next guy about a lot of things, but the next generation is not worse off than the last.
There is no military draft and everyone but the mentally deficient has a full stomach (there are more obese people than hungry people in the U.S.). Taxes seem high, but even the poorest people have color TV with cable and cell phones if not smartphones. And when was the last time you saw a hitchhiker?
We may be morally bankrupt, but materially, the next generation is swimming in a glut.
EDITOR: Concerning hitch hiking, something that our generation did both as riders and later drivers, I suspect that has gone out of fashion due to the Interstate Highway system which discourages the practice and also fear for safety. From our own experience, the fear was not misplaced.