Ok, apparently hitting the floor restarted my heart!
Whose face do you picture when you think of history’s greatest thieves? If you are an old movie buff, perhaps Butch and Sundance or Bonnie and Clyde come to mind. Maybe Bernie Madoff and his $65 billion Ponzi scheme?
Well, even that staggering amount is paltry compared to history’s truly greatest theft. And the face of the greatest thief might surprise you. If you are over 50 take a look in the mirror. History’s greatest thief is you!
The United States is $18 trillion in debt, an amount that continues to rise at an alarming rate with no end in sight by anyone’s calculation. But that is dwarfed by the $128 trillion in “unfunded liabilities.” Unfunded liabilities are the amount by which future obligations exceed the present value of funds available to pay for them.
To put that in perspective our nation’s unfunded liabilities come out to $1.1 million per taxpayer.Folks, this is the RED STAR TRIB! Massive endorser and supporter of Wellstone, Dayton, Franken, Klobuchar, BO! This column sounds like **ME** ... only I've been understating the unfunded liabilities as "$40-$60T"! I've lost touch with how bad this really is.
The CBO calculated that for debt in 2040 to equal the historical 50-year average of 38 percent of gross domestic product, Congress would need to cut spending by 13 percent or raise revenue by 14 percent beginning in 2016. Needless to say, neither of those is going to happen.Right ... and if we had done something EARLIER, it would not be this bad, **BUT** the left and papers like the Strib have been demagoguing this for DECADES. Talk of imaginary "lock boxes", complete derision of plans like W's to privatize a portion of FICA, or against Paul Ryan's plan which was basically the idea that they now assert that Boomers need to adhere to.
Is there any way to save the millennials and subsequent generations from this continuing theft? The final irony is that the heroes must be the thieves themselves. It is up to the baby boomers to vote for politicians who will make the fundamental budgetary changes to alter the current path. But this is asking such voters to reject the political pandering that tells them government can keep expanding benefits without paying their full costs.
I wouldn’t hold my breath. The older generations are addicted to receiving benefits without paying for them. The younger generations are being robbed blind and don’t even know it.I covered the Madoff - FICA similarity back in 2008 in this blog -- now seeing the Red Star agreeing with me a mere 8 years later is enough to make me think I ought have just stayed on the floor!
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