Somewhere along the line it became a perfectly legitimate media meme that future generations will somehow be better situated to endure drastic hits to the quality of their lives than the current generation.
We see it in AARP's tortuous explanation for their recent sell-out on Social Security:
http://www.nytimes.com/...
Reductions in benefits should be “minimal,” they should not affect current recipients and instead should be directed “far off in the future,” and they should be offset by increases in tax-generated revenue.
http://www.cbsnews.com/...
"We can make changes that are modest and we can make changes with a great deal of lead time so we don't need to affect anyone who is currently retired today or near retirement," said said David Certner, AARP's legislative policy director.
We see it in the GOP's patronizing assurances accompanying their proposal to dismantle Medicare:
http://www.nationaljournal.com/...
Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, has said time and again that the changes wouldn’t affect anybody getting close to retirement. “We propose to not change the benefits for people above the age of 55,” Ryan, chairman of the House Budget Committee, insisted last week.
We see it as an inherent, implicit assumption in the President's "Blue Ribbon" Commission organized to "tackle" entitlements:
Bowles' commission proposed trimming Social Security benefits for wealthy seniors and slowly increasing the retirement age to 69 by the year 2075 - incremental changes many lawmakers, like Republican Johnny Isakson, support.
There seem to be three possible explanations for this line of thinking. The first appears to be the magical assumption that the economic picture will be bright and rosy in the not-to-distant future, and that future generations won't need these safety nets the way our current generation does.
The second explanation is that our children and grandchildren will somehow be better able to cope with less money and medical care to live on in their advanced age--that as the water of deprivation gradually, imperceptibly boils around them they will somehow become resilient, and thus less likely to be boiled alive to the extent the current, more sensitive generation would.
The third explanation, however, seems to be the most plausible--that by the time these "reforms" are enacted and their impact is manifested on the population the people that implemented them will be dead, and there will be no one left around to blame.
There are no shortage of gloomy scenarios regarding the future of this country. There is no need to repeat them all here--one can pretty much see what is happening by taking a drive through one's hometown. Given the complete outsourcing of American manufacturing and the gradual outsourcing of the service economy, given the dwindling supplies of energy and expected impact of catastrophic climatic degradation, the idea that future generations will be in any better shape than we are right now appears fanciful. All evidence suggests they will be worse off, many far worse off. They are today's unemployed and grossly indebted young people. They are working longer hours for less money, and many do not have any real employment security. They will not need "less" health care in old age, nor will they need any "less" financial assistance to survive old age. And yet the conventional wisdom is that they must bear the burden of our greed and shortsightedness.
The driving premise underlying this movement toward "austerity" and "belt-tightening" is that we are preserving and saving these programs for future generations. But the staggering and exponentially growing level of wealth inequality and wage stagnation in this country rather suggests whatever wealth that is being generated is in fact being hoarded and narrowly held rather than used to any benefit of the general population. There is absolutely no evidence indicating that this trend is likely to be reversed in the near or distant future--to the contrary, every indication suggests it will accelerate. There is absolutely no evidence, social or economic pattern, suggesting that once these cuts to the social safety net are imposed the people who imposed them will be willing or even inclined to replace or re-establish them, whatever the economic situation.
That is in my view the colossal lie dominating the economic and political discourse of the past few years--the misperception, foisted upon the masses--that what is being done here is a finite, "temporary" measure for the purpose of "balancing our budget" and "getting our fiscal house in order." All evidence suggests the reality is going to be quite different.