Two Americas?

The two Americas? Maybe not, but there is a group warfare happening in this country right now. But it is not necessarily a class warfare. It is the aging against the young. The retiring versus those just entering the work force. Unfortunately, however, the young are not even aware that they are under attack.
It is no secret that as a society we are aging. The baby boomers are set to retire. The mean age in 1990 in the US was 36.8. By 2050 it will be 40.7. That is a 4 year rise in just a 50 year span. We are aging, and aging fast.
That is bad enough, but what we are doing to the next generations is much worse. We are simply ignoring the impending Social Security disaster, voting entitlement after entitlement for ourselves, and diving full force into the ‘I want’ mindset. All while screeching, “What about the children.”
Today there are about 3.3 taxpayers to every beneficiary of Social Security. By 2030, it is believed, the level will drop to 2 to 1. In 1990 only 12% of the population was over 65, by 2030 it will be 20%.
You don’t have to be an economics major to see a dangerous trend. The young now are going to be hit hard. They will be bearing a much larger brunt of Social Security taxes than we do now. These very same overtaxed workers will, also unfortunately, be paying for the new government busting prescription drug bill. Add to that Medicare and some believe there could be a 56 trillion dollar short fall when the baby boomers retire. Oh, and by then, I’m sure, we will not only have socialized health care, but any number of other new entitlements promised by politicians simply to buy our votes.
Sadly, the young in this country are blindly unaware of the economic dangers their futures now hold. Their schools don’t warn them. They’re to busy teaching tolerance and false self-esteem. The media won’t alarm them. Where are Jon Stewart and MTV with the 'heads up' here? And worse, many of their elders seem to have the attitude that since they’ve worked hard all their lives, they now deserve anything they can get. Forgetting, of course, that they did receive a pay check for that very same work.
The elderly also seem to believe that it is below them to have to decide between vacations and health care. Between new cars and prescription drugs. It seems odd that this same generation did not offer their parents and grandparents these very same things that they now feel personally entitled to.
It is sad that they will not, or do not, want to see the damage their selfishness will cause the future generations of our country. It is also sad that those with the power to educate our young to this impending disaster sit quietly. Where are MTV, Comedy Central, Hollywood celebrities, sports stars, etc on these issues? Are they ignorant to them or do they just not fit into their political agendas? Let’s ‘get out the vote’ but no way in hell are we going to tell you what our pet politician has in store for your future.
I have to believe that if the young could be made to understand the mountain we were placing in front of them, that they would rise up en masse. That they would spend more time trying to understand the political process in this country before it eats up their futures alive. The aging generation needs to step back and realize that when we put our responsibilities on the young it may push them down like the massive weight of the world. And that in itself could lead to our greatest fear…Atlas Shrugged.