To the Editor:
Re “Root
Canal Politics” (column, May 9):
Thomas L. Friedman is right. The Greatest Generation built the most
prosperous society in history with its blood, sweat and tears, giving
its children a tremendous head start. How have we responded? By
consuming our way to insolvency. And now we’re robbing future taxpayers
of wealth that has yet to be produced.
The Grasshopper Generation may be too kind a term for us boomers. Even
grasshoppers don’t eat their young.
Michael Smith
Cynthiana, Ky., May 10, 2010
To the Editor:
Thomas L. Friedman equates boomers with “hungry locusts” who have eaten
through the abundance their parents created for them, sinking our
country into crippling debt. If anything, it was boomers who rescued our
economy in the 1980s and 1990s through the high-tech entrepreneurial
economy they created. And the one president who embraced boomers, Bill
Clinton, ended his presidency with a budget surplus that could have
lasted for years to come.
Perhaps Mr. Friedman should aim his fire elsewhere. Dial back to the
1960s, when the venerated World War II generation claimed that we could
have both guns and butter, and in the process sank our nation into debt
while shipping off baby boomers to their death in Vietnam. Move ahead to
the 1970s, when that same generation ran our industrial base into the
ground, leaving us with double-digit inflation and interest rates and
steering our automobile industry into near collapse.
Ronald Reagan ran against the boomer culture and the national debt
soared. George W. Bush, demographically a boomer, prided himself on
being the anti-boomer and presided over the near collapse of our
economy.
Mr. Friedman is right that we need a national reckoning to deal with our
economic woes. But criticism of baby boomers will only delay the real
conversation we need to have.
Leonard Steinhorn
Washington, May 9, 2010
The writer, a professor at the School of Communication of American
University, is the author of “The Greater Generation: In Defense of the
Baby Boom Legacy.”
To the Editor:
Far from being a resource-consuming bunch of slackers, members of the
baby boom generation have worked hard and steadily for 40 years to pay
the bills for themselves, their children and, yes, their parents in the
Greatest Generation, an admirable group that nevertheless has taken much
more money out of our social safety net than it ever put in.
And the boomers have done all this in a decades-long era of flat wages
and rising prices. While many Greatest Generation families could make it
on one income, it now takes two incomes. And what is our thanks for all
this steady, tortoise-like effort? To be told we are the
problem.
This is not a generational quarrel; it’s a political one. Approximately
two-thirds of our current national debt was accumulated under the last
three Republican presidents: Ronald Reagan and the two George Bushes.
Who began the movement to prevent the kind of sensible tax increases we
need to pay for the government services we want? Conservative
Republicans. Who turns out to oppose tax increases, often school bond
efforts? Older voters of the Greatest Generation.
We don’t disagree with Mr. Friedman’s assertion that our social programs
may face hard times and cuts. But we disagree that the baby boom
generation is to blame. We have had our nose to the grindstone for
decades, trying to support not one but three generations.
Jan Farrington
Brian Farrington
Fort Worth, May 10, 2010
To the Editor:
“Root Canal Politics” aptly describes our addiction to free lunch
politics. As a local government official who has to balance a budget
every year, I see one answer—a balanced budget amendment. Avoiding
budget reality has eliminated honesty from our politics and creates
disincentives to find efficiencies, to compromise or to prioritize.
A balanced budget amendment—with reasonable provisions for recessions,
times of war and debt financing for sound investments—would not
change parties’ priorities, but it would force an honest discussion of
the trade-offs. We need new rules if we are to bring honesty back to our
politics.
Rob Krupicka
Alexandria, Va., May 9, 2010
The writer is a city councilman.
To the Editor:
Thomas L. Friedman states, “My takeaway is that U.S. and European
politicians—please don’t laugh—are going to have to get a lot
smarter and more honest.”
It is the voters who are going to have to get a lot smarter and more
honest with one another first, and then demand that their politicians
get smarter and more honest. Given our political system, it’s unlikely
to happen the other way around.
Joe McDevitt
London, May 9, 2010
Keith Burgess-Jackson, J.D., Ph.D. 